Some part of you might rise to heaven they said; you hoped and thought forgotten to be as good as forgiven, said this part was your all; smiling, I cupped it in my hand, feeling you knew the world reading from my palm This Church believes both your halves have souls, are worthy; as rewritten long ago, in dirtied ink more permanent than your sense of context this Church believes you, that you are bathed in light mottled in the murk pooled in your eye while you seek yet another half, forgetting you saw a reflection in the endless great hidden where we drank; you called it communion, thinking it only slightly sour, and this Church calls it Lethe Some part of you tries to send the other to hell; you delight in legends of frost, forest smoking salmon flesh I have put down my torch but you imagine fog, snuffing it and its alit memories in a drowning brutal, allowing you to grow the mildew of years on the walls of my hearth; I'll say it's now damp, perhaps warmer than the fire. Some part of you fumbled knives in our embrace, and I’ll say I was not uncut, but knowing some part of you might have swallowed back those blades, water falls guilt whistling through the whorls of my fingertips; so I let your clouds condense instead on the scar obscured in the worlds of my blessing Yet this Church believes too in your spectre hanging over you clawing in severance we believe in its nails on your back, etching the false epiphany, tender in ice-smoke and this Church believes in our fear; so when I found you swaddled in your shade’s oubliette, neither half could recall my hand or what it had done.
This is a nascent thing which needs some editing and further form.
That’s why he’s the GOAT - certainly more complex than anything I’m able to write
8 things I love about your poem:
1. “forgotten to be / as good as forgiven” – brilliant theological wordplay.
2. “This Church believes both your halves / have souls” – striking reframing of institutional belief.
3. “in dirty ink more / permanent / than your sense of context” – sharp image of corrupted permanence.
4. Shifting pronouns (“you,” “I,” “This Church”) – creates layered intimacy/distance.
5. “I have put down my torch / but you imagine / fog” – haunting ritual breakdown.
6. “falls / guilt at my fingertips” – great visual/sensory enjambment.
7. “your spectre hanging / over you” – self as ghost, elegantly executed.
8. Repetition of “This Church believes…” – liturgical, ironic, anchoring.
6 places you could push it further:
1. “your / all” – vague; consider a richer or more charged term.
2. “not / your better half” – cliché; rewrite or invert.
3. “brutal” (standalone) – underpowered; deepen image.
4. “knives in that dark” – familiar; make more sensory or surreal.
5. “guilt at my fingertips” – add texture: slick, oily, cold, etc.
6. Final “my hand” line – powerful; echo “hand” earlier for resonance.