It's very depressing how true this is nowadays. When anbroke heart can lead to a lot of negative coping. Like self harm. The nights are always the lonely. And always makes you feel worse. I do like here how you went to both sides of this. The day and the night. The day time it's easy to fake a smile to hide all of the pain you feel inside. So they won't feel more hurt than they already do. It's hard to tell who is really hurting. You did great to write this because I can relate to it almost everyday. Beautiful

I think this piece is very relate able to a lot of people. Sometimes I think there are more "broken children" in the world than happy ones. There are no "normal" families, really...they all have their skeletons in their closets.

I really like the opening line. Slashed hearts lead to slashed wrists... in most cases, that is true. When someone is repeatedly heart broken, their psyche begins to crumble and a need to take the pain away lingers until one day, they can't take it anymore and do it...which either ends in suicide or a cutting addiction. In this poem however, I think the heartbreak isn't love related, it's family related. The people who should be there for us the most, family, can sometimes bring the most heartache with rejection, abuse, feeling invisible, etc.

It's almost like you live a double life. During the day, you put on a mask of happiness to please the people around you, maybe to make them accept you more or something. However during the night, when all the doors are closed and everyone is sleeping, you can let your guard down and let the darkness, the depression, rejection, hurt of it all show. You don't have to hide and in some ways that feels good but in others badly because you hate the fact that you are so unhappy and have to hide it.

The ending has a very strong impact. Someone is always looking for a reason to bring you down even further, to hurt you... to eventually eliminate any form of light in your life, blow out your candle flame.

I think this is a great poem but I do have a couple suggestions on the placement of a couple lines and the format. I will write an example of how I think it would read more smoothly down below, hope you don't mind. :) It's just a suggestion and completely up to you if you decide to use it. Either way, it's a good poem you wrote!

"Slashed hearts give way to slashed wrists.
Their pain is hidden behind closed doors
and the ache of loneliness is almost audible
in the shattered night.

During the day, they live in a masquerade,
the fragility of their butterfly smiles is
unconcealable; if anyone were to look too closely,
they would see the paper think mask
of normality that could be broken
with just a breath.

And sadly, for

The Broken Children, The Rejects, The Hurting

there are just too many people who would
be all too happy to blow out a candle flame."

--- I think that swapping the second and third line in the beginning makes more sense, at least to me. Also I think separating "The Broken Children, The Rejected, The Hurting" into a line of it's own really makes it stand out more. But like I said, these are just a few suggestions.

Overall, really nice work with a sad message of broken children.

Such a touching poem Lemon, it is my kind of theme, and I relate to the message in it and feel quite passionate about raising awareness of the subject on neglect, abuse, broken children like you say.

Closed doors is a typical thing that is relate to these kind of situations, it always annoys me when people look at the outside and think it is all happy, and could not possibly be any different than how it appears, but yet so often it is.

Your wording in here is just outstanding, with the slashed hearts and wrists, this is so relevant to self harm and how sometimes children find this way to cope to mask the pain on the inside.

The use of the butterfly for the fragile effect is also well done, because it shows just how innocent a child is, and how we can shape them and shape their life and mind set, their confidence and self esteem, they just have such a fragile mind and when it is damaged too often as a young child, you are indeed right,, they do become broken.

I think you done well with this piece.