What a horrible way to die. Strangulation or suffocation is horrible. Milly x

Woah, this was haunting and sad... I immediately pictured someone young, just from the way you wrote this. What gave me shivers is that you didn't merely say she suffocated, but you made it that more hard-hitting by writing first that "suffocation swallowed her eyes" and that air itself couldn't "carry her last word". The title gave me a sense of moving on from this world to the next, that perhaps drifting away or the idea of flying away would not be such a harsh reality. I don't know how quite to describe it but it was like your words were violent yet written with this tragic tone that this girl had much more, her words, her voice, could have done so much more.

Addressing the reader, reality as 'you' is clever. Pronoun use can be really important in poetry. 'They' would sound so trite, and as would 'reality'. You have enough nuance for this not to be immediately obvious.

This is a good poem. I like 'suffocation swallowed her eyes', as an image but I find it a little awkwardly phrased. Your subject is 'You', then it is 'suffocation', then 'air'. I feel some reordering of the lines could help that.

'Your hands grabbed the inside of her throat,
air couldn't carry her last word as
suffocation swallowed her eyes.'

I feel the focus is less jumpy here, but that's just a personal thing!

'Bits of life' sounds a little too...general, vague? I can't imagine 'bits', and nor do I feel 'held' is a strong enough verb for someone being suffocated.

I love the ending, because I really imagine her being lifted, not in control, struggling. The simplicity here was really stark. Enjoyed reading this. :)

ugh..........wow

I had troubled making sense of how this is written. Let me see if I can explain. I might rush the comment because my baby is sleeping and can wake up any moment.

Okay...

So you started with

“Your hands grabbed the inside of her throat”

^i don’t think “the inside of” is needed. I’m picturing (literally )the inside of the throat. The redness.... meat, tendons, muscles.... and I can’t exactly figure out how the inside of the throat is being grabbed.

Then suffocation swallowed her eyes

I can picture that line

Then Air couldn’t carry her last word

You are personifying Air. Now, I’m confused as to who is “her” in the rest of the poem.

Though I liked the poem

I read this poem a couple of times, and I think the ending stanza/verse is what stuck with me the longest. You wrote this poem with heavy use of strong imagery, wording it in such a manner that it provokes an abject reaction from the reader/audience:

'your hands grabbed the inside of her throat'

Your choice to use the word 'inside' elevates the imagery from something unpleasant to truly abject; the imagery, the thought of someone reaching inside a persons throat to strangle them is unsettling. It also brings up the question of who the 'you' is (i did read the comments and you did say that the 'you' in the poem is society, which lends credence to my thoughts). Is it society? If so, the imagery of society reaching into 'her' to silence her from the inside, makes me think that this poem is a commentary on society's treatment of females. In the case that it is a specific 'her', it might be related to a specific case where someone didn't get justice.

I really like the way 'suffocation swallowed her eyes' rolls of the tongue, even though the reality of it is bleak. It sort of offers the reader, some form of comfort to let them know that her eyes were closed as she died. I don't know why, but there is comfort to know that as opposed to the alternative, if her eyes remained open while life was squeezed out of her.

'her blue toes tapped the floor, one last time'.

The 'one last time' part makes me immediately think of 'her' as a dancer, or someone who loved to dance and may have not been able to pursue it for whatever reason. The final image that was presented to me was a pair of ballet slippers; was it a symbol of femininity? A symbol of innocence? I'm not sure, and I enjoy it for that.

Well written poem :) Sorry if any of this came across as rambling.