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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Written on November 02, 2023

Submitted by zachariaschristy on November 05, 2023

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