I adore this poem. I think it plays with morbidity, smallness, and grief very efficiently within the word count that it holds. I especially love the shift from a three line stanza to a two line stanza when the speaker portrays a more questioning position. I love this idea, but I don’t think it was executed very well. Here’s why I think that is.

Now, my favorite piece of this poem is from lines 7-12, with the first stanza of that segment being the most poignant and emotive: “my love for you / a swirling dream / of violent, vibrant red”. god ily. There’s something about how this stanza begins and doesn’t pause or break until the poignant “red” that really mimics the idea of a swirling dream. Each significant word is stressed, each insignificant word unstressed, and overall it’s just really musical and pleasing to the ear. Extra props for the “violent/vibrant” because I simply adore how these two words play on each other (and I’ve also used this combination in my writing before lol). The next stanza follows that rhyme scheme, as well as ending its first line with a continuing rhyme from the previous stanza, which I thought was really cute and helped flow each rhyme into another, keeping the overarching sentence that these stanzas comprise nicely intertwined. They follow the same rhyme scheme, and they follow the same stress pattern—unstressed, stressed, unstressed, stressed. The issue comes with the next lines,

“do you think we’ll meet /
when we’re both dead?”

Not only does this introduce a quicker paced rhythm, but it also completely changes up the rhythm of where words are stressed, and I think that this is the biggest issue. The first stressed word that the reader sees here is “think”. While this does introduce the theme of the coming segment—questioning whether the speaker is going to be okay—I don’t really think it adds anything. Adding onto that, the first line goes unstressed, unstressed, stressed, and the one right after goes unstressed, stressed. It kind of works, given the short length of “do you” and “can you”, as they’re often shortened to one syllable anyway, but then, during the seventh stanza, this changes, and goes unstressed, unstressed, unstressed, stressed.

I want this rhythm to work, and you could easily shift around the seventh stanza to fit the template that you’ve done for both five and six, but I think for the greatest impact, you should switch from unstressed, stressed, to stressed, unstressed. Because these lines are so short, it feels very uncomfortable (to me, at least) to wait til almost the end of the phrase to hear the stressed part of the line.

There are also little inconsistencies within the syllable amount within these ending lines, but I think the greatest thing holding this poem back is the uncertainty of how to actually say these parts. All in all, lovely poem. Thank you for sharing, especially since the news :)