Analysis of A Séance the Only Way I Know How
Downturned eyes.
I’ve spent so long crawling towards a glance across the page.
Across a plane of something plain that I need to build upon.
I carve out a face from a million years ago in ink and a processed sliver of wood, bleached and cut to my desired shape.
Smooth like the floor I lick the scraps of whatever memories I can conjure up of you and what you looked like in a romanticized version of the past.
I remember how good it felt in the arms of someone forbidden to hold me.
I wrestle with the knowledge that you wouldn’t if you could.
I’d like to convince myself that I don’t know that.
That your feelings about me were as much of a mystery as how I ever got so lucky as to meet you, but so cured as to never know you.
Never cling, never stick.
I’m cursed to carve a face that’s fading from my feeble mind.
If I’m alive for a reason, let it be to see you in the palm of my hand as I resurrect you with pen and paper.
Scheme | ABCDEFGHIJKL |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11 11111001010101 010111011111101 1110110101010100101011101110101 110111011101001110111011110001010101 1010111100111100111 1101010111111 11101111111 1110011011101001111011101111111111011 101101 11110111011101 110110101111110011111101111010 |
Characters | 943 |
Words | 198 |
Sentences | 12 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 12 |
Lines Amount | 12 |
Letters per line (avg) | 60 |
Words per line (avg) | 16 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 716 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 187 |
About this poem
This poem is about someone I fell in love with in a mental hospital, and the efforts to capture a face lost to my bad memory.
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"A Séance the Only Way I Know How" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 14 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/175118/a-s%C3%A9ance-the-only-way-i-know-how>.
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