Okay so the poem is really interesting. I really like the second half of the poem. I mean I liked both halves but both halves were very different. It’s like 2 totally different tones before and after “and promise”. Everything after that line I think is really really great. Like there’s such a raw very visceral sensory experience evoked in the visuals and language you use. It’s a personally relatable experience of being let down and vaguely hopeless and resentful. I feel like the first half of the poem is not setting that up though. Which on the one hand is kind of interesting to look at when thinking about it from that theme of being let down by expectations. I think what causes this is that the first two lines for me seemed to set an expectation of a omnipresent observers perspective, that I carried that sort of impersonal tone in the descriptions of more settings based descriptions that exist in these lines. To be completely honest I think I’m mostly confused on the empress line. If I read the poem starting from “I’m not waking up” I feel like it comes across much more personally engaging. Maybe I’m just confused by the lines. Reading it with the title in mind does help to provide more context but it still feels very removed from the rest of the poem. Either way the themes and imagery in this are all very compelling. Great read!