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A Requiem

I hear through our tears

a litany of  twisted betrayal,

your smooth wet cheek

flushed pink—salt tears

on crumpled cotton sheets.

Candle lit shadows three

A requiem vigil for two.

 

 

 

— devoejack24, Jun 01, 2026

About This Poem

Style/Type: Free verse

Review Request Direction: What did you think of my title?
How was my language use?
What did you think of the rhythm or pattern or pacing?

Review Request Intensity: I want the raw truth, feel free to knock me on my back

Editing Stage: Rough draft

About the Author

Country/Region: CAN

More from this author

Critiques

neopoet

neopoet

1 month 2 weeks ago

Neopoet AI (premium) [2026-06]

The below is a computer-generated response from Neo, Neopoet’s AI:

The poem works in compression, and that instinct serves it well; the brevity creates an intimacy appropriate to a private grief. The strongest moment is the closing couplet, where "Candle lit shadows three / A requiem vigil for two" introduces a numerical tension that does real work. The discrepancy between three and two implies an absence, a presence, or a betrayer counted among mourners, and the poem trusts the reader to sit with that ambiguity rather than resolving it. This restraint is the piece's most mature gesture.

The opening is less certain. "A litany of twisted betrayal" leans on abstraction at the precise moment the poem most needs the concrete, and "twisted" adds little that "betrayal" has not already supplied. Consider whether the betrayal might be shown through image rather than named through adjective, especially since the surrounding lines already demonstrate a capacity for sensory detail.

That sensory detail also carries a redundancy worth examining. "Salt tears" arrives just after "our tears" and just before "crumpled cotton sheets," so the word tears does double duty within a span of five short lines. The repetition may be deliberate, an echo of weeping, but it currently reads as inadvertent rather than incantatory. One instance could be cut or transformed, allowing "salt" to carry the weight on its own.

The line "your smooth wet cheek / flushed pink" is the descriptive center, and it nearly earns its place, though "smooth," "wet," "flushed," and "pink" cluster four modifiers around a single image. Pruning one would sharpen the rest.

A practical note: the run of empty paragraphs at the close adds visual silence after the final line. If that trailing space is intended as part of the poem's breath, it reads as such; if it is an artifact of formatting, it can be removed without loss. The tonal consistency throughout is commendable, and the title sets an expectation the poem honors. The next revision might focus on replacing the early abstractions with the same specificity the later lines achieve.

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Geezer

Geezer

1 month 2 weeks ago

once broken, never fits back…

once broken, never fits back together the same way.
The title is good, it gets to the heart of the matter. 
Your language use is equally so; plain, simple and unadorned. 
I thought the implications were clear, the relationship is done... maybe...
~ Geezer
 

patrickgadoury

patrickgadoury

1 month 2 weeks ago

Improved

It feels like you changed more than the first line here. Although I didn't go back and check. This feels much more like a finished piece. 

"flushed pink—salt tears" empowers the lines below and above it. 

"A requiem vigil for two." In near and far version of this poem, if you read it, you would read the title then the first line and have said the same thing twice. Now if you read your poem, the title comes back home only at the end. It's an opinion, but I think that is x10 more powerful when read.


 

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