Anger rarely arrives politely, and "mistakes" doesn't pretend otherwise. The speaker opens with blunt confessions: "I want to hate you / I Want to leave you / I want to blame you." Then the poem stalls on a lone "I Want to," like a breath held, before the three harshest verbs land one per line: "punch you / burn you / hurt you." The poem is signed with the spaced-out letters L-C-H-A-O-S-L, with "chaos" tucked between two L's. Nothing is given about who wrote it or when, so everything has to be read from the page itself. Fortunately, the page offers plenty.
The situation is simple. Someone has caused the speaker to lose things ("all the things I have lost"), and the speaker is left deciding what to do with the resulting rage. The central idea is that feeling the pull of revenge is different from giving in to it. The poem travels from wanting to harm, to wanting to watch the other person suffer, to choosing to lift them up.
The construction mirrors that journey. The first stanza is built on repetition, "I want to" over and over, and it escalates. The early verbs (hate, leave, blame) are emotional, while the last three (punch, burn, hurt) are physical and violent. There is no punctuation, no commas or full stops, so the voice sounds breathless, as if the list could keep going. The odd capital in "I Want to," which appears twice, makes the desire itself feel emphasized, almost shouted.
The second stanza turns colder and more cunning. The speaker no longer wants to strike but to witness: "I want to see your face / When you realize your mistakes." The word "face" returns two lines later, when "Karma is gonna slap you across the face." The face is where realization shows and where the slap lands, so the image does double work. Notice, too, that a slap is far milder than a punch or a burn. The violence has shrunk, and the speaker hands what remains to Karma, a personified force with a casual, spoken "gonna." There is also a quiet sound pattern: "mistakes," "late," "face," "faith" and "make" all share a long "ay" vowel, and this chain of sounds keeps the title's word echoing under the whole poem.
Then comes the turn, signalled by "But right when you crumble down." The verb "crumble" suggests a building collapsing, and the answer to it is physical as well: "I know I'm going to help you up." The hands that wanted to punch now lift. The reason the speaker gives is not pure kindness but a kind of moral pride: "Because I wil never make your mistake." Helping becomes a way of proving they are different, which makes the generosity more complicated and more human. It is left open whether this is forgiveness or quiet superiority.
The final stanza breaks apart. "To treat them / How they treated you / I hope you chose" is scrambled syntax, a sentence that seems to lose its footing. Judging by the lines, the "mistake" may be passing on the cruelty you once received, treating others as you were treated, though "them" is never explained and the poem doesn't confirm this. The closing question, "Would you walk away?", is left hanging, addressed either to the wrongdoer or to the reader. It also echoes the opening wish to "leave you." The speaker once wanted to walk away and has decided to stay. Now the question is whether the other person would do the same.
The rough surface, with its slips in spelling ("An lose," "wil") and uneven capitals, reads like something typed fast, with feeling arriving before polish. That rawness suits the subject. What makes the poem worth studying is its honesty. It lets the ugly feelings speak first, so the mercy that follows has to be earned. It also shows how a short, unrhymed poem can hold two opposite impulses at once and let a single "But" decide between them.