This morning at ten I woke with a fright
Shocked and confused at what I did last night
It started out great I felt more than coherent
And now I’m faced with calling my parents
I hopelessly grope around the dark room
Trying to find my socks and left shoe
Not bothering to change from last night’s clothes
In too much of a rush to walk on tip toes.
But I guess that’s the price of not being cool
Staying up late to study made me late for school.
In
my poem, “The Walk of Shame”, I include many details which strengthen the
uncomfortable tone throughout. Firstly, the title of my poem indicates
awkwardness as many people in today’s society associate that phrase with
something many people feel hesitant to discuss. The morals of today have
trained people to think of the walk of shame as something to regret which I use
in the obvious diction of “shame” to further my poem’s discomfort. In addition,
my phrasing of “I woke with a fright”, laced with a shocked tone, implies regret
for the consequences of the previous night, leaving the audience to imagine the
different scenarios (1). This vagueness of this phrase in addition to others
such as “Not bothering to change” creates a sense of suspense as I leave the
interpretation solely up to the reader’s imagination (7). I believe that my
stylistic technique to leave out punctuation until the final two lines puts the
reader into the poem as they feel the frantic tone and continue reading without
a pause, similarly to how the speaker feels in the poem. Finally, I think that
the ending of the poem spares the reader from complete discomfort as I ease
their imaginations with the true actions of the night and the purpose of the
frazzled feeling the next morning. No one can relate to the walk of shame
coming into school late quite like I can.
I can recount many a night in which my nerdy mentality pushed me to stay up late to study. However, more often than not, even though I had the intent to hit the books, my face would actually fall into the book pages. After the ordeal of devoting energy to keep awake, and after a long period of procrastination, I would eventually pass out from exhaustion after five minutes of real studying time. Blythe, your poem perfectly encompasses that uncomfortable feeling of waking up in the morning and feeling confusion and self-loathing.
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