I really struggled to grasp this poem, and even after re-reading it and reading it out loud I still feel like I am just scratching it. It feels dark, it touches demonic, so dark poems feels exactly where this guy belongs. I appreciate your rhyming here - that is tricky to do well and not make the poem about the rhyming. Yours was done very naturally and added to the flow.

I feel like I struggled with the 'who' of this poem. It goes from me to they to we, and in between. It is hard to figure out the "who". But then I wonder if you do that on purpose. At first talking about yourself, and then about these dark spirits that claim us after we die, and then us joining in the darkness, and then us, as part of the darkness, claiming those who die.

There is a morbid fatalism in this poem that in some way is also. . . comforting? Like, if this is the way things are, this is what life and death means, that life is just a breath before sinking into the darkness, then I could make peace with that - you know, it would be a solid thing to know and accept as just how things are.

It is interesting about how you talk about life, about the living. It's as if living doesn't matter, because we will all die and become part of the darkness, but to the dark the living are generally what matter, as they welcome the living into the dark.

I would be interested in your take on this poem. I know that poetry is often full of multiple interpretations and is often left up to the reader to make meaning to it. I also know that as writers, as poets, we mean something when we put words together.

I understood nothing even after I read it for the third time. I will be happy to know the hiden message. Too Dark.