Almost everyone has said "I'm fine" when it wasn't true. Bremarie Gulfan builds a whole poem in the gap between that phrase and what it covers. The speaker is in serious distress: starving, self-harming, and finally wanting to die. Each time, they hand the listener a small, believable excuse instead. The central idea is that the most ordinary sentences can be the best disguise, and that a person in pain may be both hiding and hoping to be found.
The poem is built as seven pairs. Each begins with a line in capitals, the answer the speaker gives out loud, and each is followed by a lowercase line that says what is actually true. The capitals read like a reflex, loud and automatic, a mask pulled down in a hurry. The lowercase lines are quieter and more exposed. This means the poem can be read two ways. Read only the capitals and you overhear an ordinary, slightly prickly conversation. Read only the lowercase lines and you hear a crisis. The poem makes you hold both at once, which is exactly what a listener who accepts "I'm fine" fails to do.
The excuses are chosen carefully. "Tired," "I already ate," and "cold" are the explanations nobody questions. Two of them begin with "IM JUST", and that small word "just" is the poem's quiet hinge. It shrinks each problem to something trivial. In the final line it comes back in the truth, "I just want to die", and now it sounds flat and exhausted, as if the speaker has said the unthinkable so often in their head that it no longer has any drama left. The same minimizing word works first as a lie and then as a confession.
Punctuation matters here too. Apostrophes are missing throughout ("Im," "cant," "Ive"), so the lines look hastily typed, like messages sent in a rush. Look at where full stops fall. "Please help me" ends with no punctuation at all, as if the plea is still hanging in the air. The only line that ends with a firm full stop is the last: "I just want to die." The sentence closes like a door.
The poem also escalates. It opens with a plea and moves through exhaustion, then the body ("I starve myself"), then hidden scars, before reaching the death wish. The lies shift as well. "IM BETTER, I PROMISE" is the most elaborate cover, and the word "promise" is ironic, since it comes just before the line "Ive never been this bad." Then the poem's biggest truth is paired with its smallest lie: "IM OKAY." Two words hide everything.
The fourth pair, the exact middle of the seven, is the most revealing: "GO AWAY" and "show me you care enough to stay." It is the only moment where the truth line speaks directly to "you." The speaker's push is really a test, and the pushing away is a way of asking whether anyone will refuse to be pushed. It makes the poem about a relationship as well as a secret, and it puts a quiet responsibility on the listener.
There is no rhyme, no regular rhythm, and almost no figurative language. The imagery is blunt and physical: hunger, cold, scars. That plainness suits a poem about concealment, since nothing in it is dressed up. Its significance lies in how well it teaches us to listen. A reader finishes it knowing that "I'm fine," said in a certain tone, may be the most important sentence in the room, and that a gentle second question can matter more than the first.
If any of this feels close to your own life, or to a friend's, please tell a trusted adult, a school counsellor, or a local crisis line. The poem itself asks for exactly that: someone who stays.