Hair is an odd thing to begin a goodbye with, yet Dominic Black's «Abandon» opens right there: "Do not look at me / For all my hair has abandoned my body." The first thing we learn about the speaker is what they have lost, and that they are ashamed to be seen. The poem never names an illness or says who is speaking to whom. Still, the hair loss, the broken wings and the repeated word "leaving" suggest someone near the end of life addressing a person they love. The poem moves from "do not look at me" to a request to look outward, at life itself. Its central idea is that the one who is leaving can release the one who stays, asking them to live on their behalf and to discover a freedom they hadn't noticed they had.
The title pulls in several directions. The hair abandons the body, and the speaker, though not by choice, abandons the loved one. "Abandon" can also mean reckless freedom, as in living "with abandon," and the last stanza quietly reaches for that sense. The word appears only once in the text, yet it hangs over every line.
The second stanza is the poem's gallery of losses: "I have fallen / My wings broke / Colour has left my eyes / No more hair to stroke." Each loss belongs to a different register. Wings suggest lightness and escape, colour suggests vitality, and hair "to stroke" suggests touch. That last line is the most tender, because it turns a symptom into an intimacy. Someone used to stroke this hair, and the line quietly says so. The grammar is loose, too. "I have fallen" slides into "my wings broke," which sounds like unpolished speech rather than a performance, and the plain, mostly one-syllable words keep the grief from sounding decorated.
The rhyme scheme is worth following, because it changes. In the first stanza only the final pair rhymes, "brave" and "slave." In the second and third, only the even lines match: "broke" with "stroke," "leaving" with "grieving." The lines are short, around five to seven syllables, but the second line of the poem runs to eleven, spilling out like a confession before the voice steadies itself. The irregular early stanzas feel like halting speech. Then the final stanza locks all four lines onto one sound: "me," "see," "be," "free." The poem seems to gain certainty as it goes, and the closing stanza sounds like a blessing. The price is a slightly sing-song, repetitive ending ("be" appears twice). That simplicity could be a weakness, but it could also be deliberate, a lullaby-like comfort offered to someone who needs it.
Several key words work as a pair. "Slave" is the harshest word in the poem, and the speaker applies it to themselves. The poem doesn't say what enslaves them, but illness, the failing body or fear are all plausible readings. "Free" is the last word. Between those two sits "brave," so the survivor's courage becomes the bridge from one condition to the other. The speaker doesn't want to pass on their own captivity and asks the loved one to live differently.
The third stanza is where the speaker is most honest. "Although I don't want you to leave / I'm the one leaving" admits an irrational wish for the beloved to stay close, even though the speaker is the one going. Then comes the matching pair "I know you'll be sad / I know you'll be grieving." The speaker does not forbid grief. They acknowledge it, and that acknowledgement is what stops the final advice from sounding like a lecture. Even the casual "actually" in "how much you're actually free" has a gentle effect, as if the speaker is pointing out something the survivor has overlooked.
The poem matters because it reverses the usual direction of comfort. The person with the least left to give is the one offering reassurance. It also shows how far plain speech can go. With direct address, commands like "Do not look" and "live for me," and an ending that tightens into rhyme, it shows that a farewell does not need elaborate imagery to be moving.