Cara, this write, yet again is very powerful and thought provoking, i love the way it has a fluid like movement when read aloud, as always your word choices is spot on and i have noticed you have a certain way that you use your vocab with a very slight use of repettion on occasion. It has a massive impact on the reader and gives the piece much strength. I find repetittion a bit tiresome sometimes but you get the right balance of it and use it well.

The emotion of the piece i also really love, how it flowed from feeling almost helpless in the begining to empowered at the end and the transition between the two was almost seemless....something which is not easy to do.

In short....loved it.....avidly awaiting your next :-)

I suppose this means I lost.

You have proven to me that you

were just as illustrious as you say to be.

You were just as charismatic as I never

had the courage to admit you were.

You were just as virulent as your victims claim.

- Great opening, you give an idea of the characters and what the relationship is between them. Your word choice amazes me and it fits in perfectly with your poem and the flow of it. I like how you worded this beginning with what this person is, but that you thought they were that anyway. almost like you knew they were like this but yout ook a chance and now regret taking the chance because you were right about them.

There was no right answer.

You could always disprove me.

My retaliations were useless.

You could shoot down even the

most intricate of defenses.

There was no way out, you were too quick.

You guarded every exit, you were too skilled.

I could not pretend that I stood a chance.

- this shows just how powerful this person is, no matter what they did, they could get away with it because of the power they had. You created a very powerful character here and made them out to be unstoppable of what they were doing. The way you wrote that you didn't even pretend you could win, made this impact even stronger. Like you gave up because you knew you wouldn't beat them.

Standing in your shadow, that you

abused to your advantage, I was nothing.

The darkened, inevitable feeling stifled me.

I won't try to understand.

- so so much power in these lines, your wording is just amazing. It really does impress me a lot. The image of you standing in his shadow, from reading up to this point makes me think of you being so small and actually being lost and unseen in his massive overpowering shadow. Like it swallows you. What an image!

At some point I realized that if I

planned on a future,

I needed to surrender.

I couldn't do that.

I couldn't hand you everything I ever

fought for just to see you laugh,

crumple it,

step on it,

rip it and shred it,

break it to the point of boredom.

I couldn't watch you make a play toy

out of all the things that ever mattered to me.

- again it's your ending that finally does it. It just creates a big bang to end with and makes the meaning of the poem hit hard. I get the feeling of the trapped situation. If you do nothing, then nothing will change and it will carry on this way. However, if you want to move on then you need to surrender, which you then explain the consequences you face by doing this, making it difficult to acheive. So you become trapped and helpess in what to do to escape this.

This was so powerful, I really connected to your words here, the story this poem told and the meaning behind it. I will nominate this piece because I think it is very worthy and has been put together very well.

Excellent work.