You're so fast! Amazing. And what a punch of a poem. Sadness withered down to absence. Hopeless bereftness. And that's just the content——in the casual quip-like words, there's an extra layer of hopelessness, born from that word "never" and the shrug, and the lack of length. There's literally nothing left to say and so the poet has left it short. Because that's how little hope there is.
It reminds me, in quiet devastation, of a two-page (or 4-page??) spread in one of Alison Bechdel's graphic memoirs... I think it was Are You My Mother?. The narrator is in therapy and it's the moment she realizes her mother never loved her. It's just a multi-page spread of black-and-white rain falling. It's more lengthy than this poem of course, and more dramatic. But it shares that quality of simplicity. The rain is the "never" and the shrug in your poem. The rain is what happens after the final period in your poem.
A harsh spark of a poem. Thank you so much for responding to the challenge!
Not Searched For
Persephone went missing
one day.
Demeter shrugged:
"I never wanted a daughter
anyway."
You're so fast! Amazing. And what a punch of a poem. Sadness withered down to absence. Hopeless bereftness. And that's just the content——in the casual quip-like words, there's an extra layer of hopelessness, born from that word "never" and the shrug, and the lack of length. There's literally nothing left to say and so the poet has left it short. Because that's how little hope there is.
It reminds me, in quiet devastation, of a two-page (or 4-page??) spread in one of Alison Bechdel's graphic memoirs... I think it was Are You My Mother?. The narrator is in therapy and it's the moment she realizes her mother never loved her. It's just a multi-page spread of black-and-white rain falling. It's more lengthy than this poem of course, and more dramatic. But it shares that quality of simplicity. The rain is the "never" and the shrug in your poem. The rain is what happens after the final period in your poem.
A harsh spark of a poem. Thank you so much for responding to the challenge!