Touch Like Teeth

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

The extended fruit-and-teeth conceit is the poem's real strength: the speaker as ripe fruit being consumed sustains itself with surprising consistency, and the final image of being plucked from the branch before the eating even begins carries genuine emotional weight, suggesting that the harm preceded the violence the poem spends most of its time describing. That reversal earns its place.

The weakest line is "The sweet nectar / Of my tears, my blood, my essence" — the list flattens rather than intensifies, and "essence" in particular is vague in a way the surrounding imagery is not. Choosing only one of those three, the most specific and unexpected one, and giving it a full line would sharpen the moment considerably. "Baring into" in the opening also reads as a confusion of "baring" and "bearing," and since the image is of teeth pressing or sinking, "bearing into" is likely what the poem means — worth resolving, because the opening lines set up the whole conceit and a word-level stumble there draws the reader's attention away from the image.

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was like teeth
Biting into soft flesh.

In order to figure out which word to use- [but or though],

I first turned the word [baring] into biting.
Then looking at the action, I decided that it was telling what happened after the bite. Using though, requires that the action describes what happens in spite of the bite.

But, I had begun to die
The moment he plucked me from the branch. Other than that, I understood what this one said immediately. Nicely done, ~ Geezer.

someone replies to my comments and/or critique, I am not always inclined to respond, for I've usually already said my piece. Sometimes, I do, and when I do, it is usually to congratulate them for taking advice; mine or someone else's. You have made it clear; the reasons for the way you have expressed yourself and I am convinced that you will keep "thinking on it." ~ Geezer.