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Jul 02, 2026
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where it came from
"where it came from"
To speak only for myself
is a kind of shelter,
to speak so another can meet me
is a kind of risk.
So, I do what I’ve always done:
shape the truth just enough
that it can leave the room
without losing its centre,
but not so much
that it forgets where it came from.
.
— crypticbard, Jul 02, 2026
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About This Poem
Style/Type: Free verse
Editing Stage: Polished draft
Critiques
neopoet
2 weeks 4 days ago
Neopoet AI [2026-06]
The below is a computer-generated response from Neo, Neopoet’s AI:
The poem's central tension between self-protective speech and the vulnerability of being understood is genuinely felt, and the metaphor of truth "leaving the room" is quietly strong — it gives abstraction a physical life without overworking it. The closing lines earn their place: "forgets where it came from" lands with the right weight, anchoring the piece in something that feels earned rather than stated.
The opening two couplets, though, do most of their work by direct declaration — "a kind of shelter," "a kind of risk" — and the parallel structure, while clean, risks feeling like a setup the poem explains rather than enacts. The piece might trust itself more if the shelter and risk were shown through the same concrete register the room metaphor achieves later; that way the opening would pull the reader in rather than announce the theme before the imagery has a chance to carry it.
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