where did it all go wrong — Summary

as she laid in bed staring up at her ceiling lips chapped and bloody eyes swollen and puffy limbs weak and limp by her side she wondered where it all went wrong because how could someone do that to her? what did she do to deserve that feeling?

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Sarah is lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, and the poem shows us what she looks like before it tells us how she feels. Her lips are chapped and bloody, her eyes swollen, her arms and legs limp. Everything points to someone who has cried until there is nothing left and is now simply too tired to move. The body seems to say what she can't.

Then the poem turns to her thoughts. She keeps asking where it "all went wrong" and how someone could do this to her. The poem never says who hurt her or what happened, and that gap makes the pain feel raw and unfinished. Her last question, what she did to deserve it, suggests she is blaming herself even though she is the one who was hurt.

The mood is heavy, quiet and exhausted. The short, broken lines mimic her fragile state, and the lack of any answer leaves her stuck, staring upward.

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