A crush is rarely announced. More often it leaks out sideways, disguised as small talk, and Dalilahshigaraki's "Questions" understands this well. After one blunt admission in the opening line, "You make me lose my mind," the speaker hides behind a quiz about music, weather, scooters, ears and colors. The questions are trivial and the feeling behind them is not. The poem lives in the gap between the two.
The first stanza sets the terms with almost comic honesty about how little it takes: "It's not like you do much, / Just talk and acknowledge me." The word "acknowledge" is revealing. Judging by the wording, this is someone for whom simple attention feels like a gift. The stanza then closes on a worn-smooth phrase, "one of a kind." The cliché works in the poem's favor, because it sounds like something a person would really say rather than something polished for effect.
The second stanza shows how the poem escalates. It begins harmlessly: "What kind of music do you like? / Rain, sun or night?" The weather choice has a small slip in it, since "night" isn't weather at all, and that lets a moodier, more personal curiosity in. Then comes the last line: "Would you talk to me for the rest of my life?" It is the longest line in the poem, and it overflows the short, tidy lines around it. It is also the only question that isn't about a preference. It sits among the favorites like a real request slipped into a survey. The speaker never mentions it again, as if hoping nobody noticed, and that nervous comedy is a big part of the poem's charm.
The third stanza turns playful. Wiggling ears and curling tongues are the kind of party tricks young people trade, which gives the voice a youthful sound, though that is an inference from the tone. "Or maybe even bears?" is the funniest moment. The rhyme with "ears" seems to be steering the question, so the sound arrives before the sense. That reads less as a flaw than as a picture of someone grabbing at anything to keep a conversation alive.
The form supports this unpolished, spoken quality. There are five quatrains and no fixed meter, just short lines that follow the rhythm of speech. The rhyme is loose. "Mind" and "kind" bracket the first stanza, while "like" and "bike" rhyme in the second, with "night" and "life" echoing them only in their long-i vowel. "Ears" and "bears" rhyme, and so do "blue" and "you." In the last stanza "too" and "dude" only half-rhyme. The rhyme tightens and slackens like a person's confidence. Many lines begin with question words ("What," "Do," "Can," "Would"), so the grammar of the poem is the grammar of asking. The "oo" sound in "you," "blue," "too" and "dude" keeps returning too, so the addressee is always quietly present in the sound.
The fourth stanza offers the most basic choice of all, "red or yellow or blue," and then drops the pretense: "I'd really like to know, / So please tell me a bit about you." "Really" and "please" are the most unguarded words in the poem. They admit that the colors never mattered. The person did.
The ending is both generous and defensive. "I'll answer them if you ask" is a real offer, since the speaker is asking to be asked in return. Then "just tell me some stuff dude" deflates the mood. After "the rest of my life," that casual "dude" works like a shrug. It lowers the emotional temperature before the other person can react, whether the speaker is playing it cool or simply isn't sure how it will land. Notice, too, that the "you" never answers. The poem ends with the speaker waiting, and the reader is left to feel that silence.
What makes the poem worth reading is that it does not pretend to be grander than it is. Its central idea is that curiosity is a form of affection: wanting to know someone's favorite color is a roundabout way of saying they matter. The poem catches the awkward bravery of reaching out, and most readers will recognize that feeling.