Analysis of Ribs
Hope Sines 2004 (OH)
Expose my ribs,
My beating heart, my inflating,
Deflating lungs.
Rip me open.
Shove your fingers inside the space between my ribs,
Grab, pull, wrench them apart.
Hold onto my heart,
Feel it pulsate,
Feel the warmth of my blood,
Do you love all that I am?
Do you look inside me and see beauty?
Do you see the rot and decay of my soul?
Hold onto my heart.
Let me feel the heaviness no longer,
Despite its best efforts to be pulled down into my stomach.
Hold me up, whether it be by my heart, by my ribs, by my shoulders.
Hold me up, despite my ugly, my manic, my hatred, self-loathing.
Hold me up, I cannot do this alone.
God, do not leave me alone.
Do not let me sit and think and feel,
Feel everything yet nothing at the same time,
The nothingness I would much rather cover up with
The feeling of pills, the burn of alcohol, the sting of a blade against my skin.
In my efforts to feel anything but to feel nothing,
Anything but to feel everything,
I lose myself to destruction.
I am filled to the brim with efforts.
Mistakes, regrets, my skin covered in what used to be
Secrets.
Oftentimes I wish flowers would grow from me.
My skin, my wounds, my scars.
Anything to simply feel beautiful.
Anything to feel like something nice came from all the terrible.
But of course, nothing beautiful could grow from me.
Why should I wish for such a thing,
Such a thing I don’t deserve?
So you tell me,
As you gaze into the screaming scarlet hole in my chest,
Where you yourself have torn apart the cage that is my ribs,
What do you see in me?
Scheme | abcdaeEefghiEjklbmmnopqbbdrhshtuuhbvhwah |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (28%) |
Metre | 0111 11011010 0101 1110 111001010111 111101 11011 111 101111 1111111 1110110110 11101001111 11011 11101110 011110111101110 11110111111111110 11101110110110110 1111101101 1111101 111110101 1101101011 0100111101011 0101101110011010111 0110111011110 1011110 1111010 111101110 0101111001111 10 1011101111 111111 101101100 101111011110100 111101001111 11111101 1011101 1111 11101010101011 11011101011111 111101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,494 |
Words | 294 |
Sentences | 23 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 40 |
Lines Amount | 40 |
Letters per line (avg) | 29 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,178 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 294 |
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"Ribs" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 8 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/99662/ribs>.
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