The audience is young adults, mostly females, who are emotional and prone to romantic experiences, which often bring them mental pain. I can think of many specific people I can deliver this poem to while talking about their personal lives and helping them with their inner struggles. The poem can be presented to close friends, or in a group of people who are familiar or comfortable with each other. When I imagine a concrete person who listens to the poem declamation, I try to make my pace slower so I can watch his/her reaction, become more relatable, and share some of the emotional grief of this piece of writing.

Generally, it presupposes fast declamation, but there are longer pauses between the lines when I try to emphasize on the new idea and make the poem more rhythmical. I can speak slowly when I read the poem stressing some specific words or prolonging the pauses to make the poem more dramatic.

If I were to choose a specific sentence to represent an entire poem, I would probably stop on the last sentence “That’s when I know/I have to let go”. Basically, it has the point of entire poem. Moreover, It does not really matter how the author knows it is the right time to go; what is more important that one comes to understand this truth about the unhealthy relationship. Anyway, the poem underlines the termination of relationships, and the partner is gone because he or she wanted nothing to do it with it. Further, it does not matter how a person reaches this conclusion as long as he or she manages to realize sad truth. If I were to summarize the poem, I would probably just say: “Release the relationship that ended.” The reason of its termination is not so important, but it is over now, so it is necessary to be present-oriented and future-oriented instead of dwelling on the past.

I love that the author uses short words and creates a feeling of something finished and concrete in the poem. Short words, short sounds, and short sentences reinforce the feelings. Besides, I like how the author pairs up the sentence: “When you don’t show, more tears start to flow.” In this part, the words “show” and “flow” are quite appealing to me, because although they are not antonyms, in this particular poem, they speak of opposite occurrences and signify very different events. However, I like that the first lines in poem begin with “wh” (what, when). When author plays with the consonants in some sentences like this one: “You broke my heart, you tore me apart” and “More tears start to flow.” is also very attractive for the audience. I can use the sounds to illustrate some images in my head. For example, when I speak of tears flowing, I pronounce the word “flow” quietly as to make the listener think of a quiet flow of the river.

I make pauses in the end of each line, but I also follow punctuation carefully, so I pause whenever there is comma, and there is a new opinion presented. However, there are sentences/lines when I shorten the pause. For instance, when I say this: “Every day I wait for you/Telling myself our love was true”, I make the pause shorter, although there are two different lines, it is a continuation of the same sentence and the very same opinion. On the whole, I pay attention to the meaning of particular line carries. Thus, one should carefully vary the pauses, because it makes different parts more appealing than the others.

This article was written by Terry, from special essays