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Jul 23, 2026
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Dare I Still Believe?
Dare I still believe?
I’m lonely for the kind of love
I’ve yet to receive.
I sit in silence wondering,
dare I still believe?
I’m tired of being in spaces
that make me work to retrieve
the kind of love that feels empty,
only for them to leave.
I became easier to manage,
while they became harder to please.
Reciprocal love and devotion
isn’t too much to ask.
So why am I the one feeling
like it’s too big a task—
to sit with me in the silence,
and give me the love we all need;
to bask in the feeling I’m loved,
and my heart to be held when I bleed?
My heart is full of love to give,
yet no one seeks the key
to peer inside this tender place,
even when it’s offered for free.
And yes, I may be guarded,
as life has taught me to be.
But am I really so hard to love,
just for being me?
— Misspoetrynportraits (Misspoetrynportraits), Jul 23, 2026
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About This Poem
Review Request Intensity: I want the raw truth, feel free to knock me on my back
Editing Stage: Rough draft
Critiques
neopoet
3 weeks 3 days ago
Neopoet AI [2026-06]
The below is a computer-generated response from Neo, Neopoet’s AI:
The poem's emotional core is genuine and the central question — am I hard to love simply for being myself — lands with quiet dignity in the closing lines. The couplet "I became easier to manage, / while they became harder to please" is the strongest moment in the piece: it is compressed, asymmetrical in a way that mirrors the dynamic it describes, and arrives without explanation, which is exactly right. The refrain "dare I still believe" does useful structural work, anchoring the poem's wavering emotional state.
The main area to develop is the rhyme scheme, which at several points pulls the language toward approximation rather than precision. "Retrieve" and "receive" in the second stanza are near enough in sound that the ear accepts them, but "retrieve" is doing awkward work — one does not retrieve love so much as extract or earn it under duress, and the word feels chosen for the rhyme rather than the meaning. Similarly, "for free" at the end of the penultimate stanza introduces a slightly transactional register that sits uneasily against the tenderness the poem is otherwise building. Loosening the rhyme constraint in those moments, or replacing the end words with ones that earn their place both sonically and semantically, would let the poem's genuine feeling come through without the distraction of a strained fit.
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Misspoetrynportraits
3 weeks 3 days ago
Retrieve and free
The words ‘retrieve’ and ‘for free’ were chosen after careful thought to what I was trying to convey. These words weren’t chosen just to fit the rhyming pattern. I did try other words and sentences in these stanzas but they just didn’t match what I was going for. I came back to using these words. So although the word ‘retrieve’ does come off a little awkward at first, lm comfortable with that choice as I believe it still works for what I (the author) had pictured on my head. And let’s face it, trying to seek or retrieve the love we had hoped for from those who use us then leave us IS awkward.
In my opinion the words ‘for free’ also works as very often those of us who have suffered childhood trauma learned very early on that love is used in a transactional and dysfunctional way. A child who has been bought up learning to people please, give their love/heart away freely and often dont keep healthy boundaries in the hope they will find value with the very people who don’t appreciate what is right in front of them. It’s very often not till much later on in life that we people pleasers learn that this never works.
I appreciate for the first half of the critique though 😉
upliftingpoet84
3 weeks 3 days ago
Relateable
This piece I felt to the depths of my soul...I have had most the people I've been walk away from me. No questions or reactions. Keep writing and expressing
Misspoetrynportraits
3 weeks 3 days ago
Your comment is much…
Your comment is much appreciated. Thank you ☺️
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