Free Verse

only the droplets may dwell

April 13, 2026

In the shower soap, hands water beating down on me like hail while I'm desperately scrubbing off your touch your looks your words your smell pleading with the water to rip you off of me ready to trade anything to have it take you down the drain as far as eternity could take to crawl So I'll finally feel clean And by that I mean I'm pleading with the water to take my memories I've sloshed them in my mouth long enough that when I spit them out like geyser spouts It's filth in the drain too disgusting to look at for long Only water could carry it downstream without thinking differently of me So I scrub and scour my skin and plead with each droplet, each dew to please, I beg to rid me of you

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▾ This Poem's Voice

Your Poem's Voice

Deeply personal breakup trauma; minimal philosophical abstraction present.

Multiple interconnected ideas: cleansing, memory erasure, shame, desperation layered densely.

Anguish, self-disgust, desperation dominate; no redemptive or positive resolution offered.

Urgent, visceral language; active verbs (scrubbing, pleading, spitting); intense emotional thrust.

Approximately 32 lines; falls within 31-60 range.

Rich similes (like hail), metaphors (drain as eternity), personification (water thinking), vivid imagery.

Pure lyric internal monologue; intimate first-person voice processing private emotional crisis.

Free Verseelegyidentitylovesimile metaphor personification enjambment repetition onomatopoeia

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Comments (1)

BubbaGumpAug 16, 2026

Love the imagery here. A kind of Scarlet Letter.

only the droplets may dwell

Haileyjayne

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Comments (1)