What do you do?

The poem speaks for itself

What do you do
when the first time you break down your walls
And let someone in,
You get shot at the scene?
--When you want so much more for something
But you know you can never have it?
Or when your heart dies inside
But you have to put a band-aid on
To hide the pain from her?
Now you know how I feel
--And the pain feels so real
I know my mask is starting to peel
But I chose this life, I made this deal
What do you do
When you can't stop thinking about her?
And what do you do
When she is the only one
--Who has ever made you feel ok?
When she is the only one
--Who has ever understood you?
How do you deal with the pain
Of knowing you can't have her?
Now you start to understand
Why I need to hold her hand
This wasn't at all what I had planned
I thought for now I had love banned
But what do you do and how do you live
When you want to protect the unprotectable
And save what can't be saved?
When you try so hard to recover
What never started to begin with?
When you put your heart and soul out
Only to watch it be torn apart?
Is there any point in fighting?
Should you give up, go home
Or just try to be a good friend?
I threw my heart out on the line
And by no fault of hers, and not truly mine
I was denied the chance to feel fine
But I patiently wait for a nonexistent sign.
So what do you do
When irony chooses to strike
And the days that hurt you the most
Are the days that didn't hurt at all?
When you don't want to forget
So you don't,
But you know that you should?
When you accept your fate
When you seem to be ok,
But you know that you are not...
What do you do?

Author's Note

My only free verse poem to date, tell me what you think

Reviews

[William Liston]

I would suggest you to utilize punctuation. Dashes would be very effective with the repetition in this poem.

[Darian B.]

Where would you suggest them? I don't need every place but I'm trying to grasp what you are picturing for these dashes

[William Liston]

I would suggest putting them before lines 5 and 11. Dashes are useful to add emphasis to repetition, which is why line 5 would benefit from a dash. Since you use the phrase "when you" a lot, don't put a dash before every time you say it (then there would be too many dashes); sometimes a comma can do the trick. As for line 11, I would suggest you put dashes there because the tone suddenly shifts in that line.

[William Liston]

Just curious, when did you write this? This poem's imagery is a lot stronger than in your other works. Great job.

-William Liston

[Darian B.]

Haha, thanks. I wrote this one after all of the ones you have seen before, I wrote it about two or three months ago.