Most love poems are about reaching someone. Logan Brosemer's "Confusion" is about standing still while wanting to reach them. The speaker repeats "I want to talk to you" and keeps answering it with "but how can I?" Judging by the text, a relationship has broken down and both people are hurt. The speaker thinks speaking now would "only end in more pain," so nothing is said. The central idea is that love and action are different things, and that caring deeply does not make the first move any easier.
The poem is in free verse. It has no regular meter and no consistent rhyme, and it sounds like someone thinking aloud, not performing. Lines are short and plain. "I'm still broken" sits on a line of its own, flat and unadorned, and the next line softens it with "Although I'm getting better." That small hedge shows a speaker trying to be honest and hopeful at once. Since rhyme is absent, repetition does its work. "How can I?" appears at the opening, inside the second stanza, and again near the end, so the poem circles back to the question it began with. Its form mirrors its subject: the speaker goes round and round without getting anywhere.
Most of the poem is in tercets, three-line stanzas that feel tidy and contained, like thoughts the speaker has turned over many times. Two stanzas break that pattern, and both matter. The fifth, the list of "I hate" statements, stretches to four lines. The last is a couplet, two lines that end the poem with a verdict.
The "hate" stanza is the emotional center. The anaphora builds in a deliberate order. First the speaker hates something outside them both: "what has happened to us." Then the other person's silence: "you won't talk to me." Then the speaker's own paralysis: "I cannot bring myself to utter the first words." The anger moves steadily inward until it lands on the speaker. The fourth line, "I hate that I am afraid to...", breaks off in an ellipsis, as though the speaker cannot finish even the sentence about being unable to speak. Then comes the turn: "But I cannot hate you, no matter how hard I try." The word "try" is telling, because it suggests the speaker has attempted to switch the feeling off and failed.
The language of confusion is carefully handled. The title promises it, and the second stanza assigns it to the other person: "your mind is still a muddle." But by the third stanza the blame is shared, and the pain is "brought about by our mutual confusion." "Muddle" is a gentle, almost domestic word, not a harsh one, which suggests the speaker is judging with tenderness. The word "mutual" quietly admits that the speaker is confused too.
The poem's one picture of what the speaker longs for is the stanza about holding the other person and "looking up at the stars." After the abstract language of pain and confusion, the image is simple and physical. Stars suggest quiet and distance, and the closeness in the image is wordless. The speaker imagines being together without needing to talk, which is exactly what they cannot manage now. Later, "My entire soul is telling me to be near you" sets that bodily, instinctive pull against the stuck mind.
The ending is the most debatable part. "The choice is yours" can be read as generosity, a respectful refusal to push someone who is still confused. It can also be read as a sidestep, since the speaker has admitted being "afraid" and now hands the decision to the other person. The poem does not say which, and that ambiguity keeps it honest. Even the final line is a statement, not an invitation, and the question "how can I?" is never answered.
The poem is worth reading for its recognizable situation: two people who each wait for the other to speak first. It does not resolve the standoff with a reconciliation or a dramatic exit. It leaves the speaker exactly where many people find themselves, caring a great deal and unable to say so.