Happiness

[Buh4Bee]

Please critique for punctuation and general structure flaws:

Happiness

Standing in the shower
Echoes of laughter
hard to hear
through the closed door.

Slowly, gently,
water washes
dirt away
between the nails
and cracked skin.

Inside, the vapor,
hangs in the air
catches the refracted light
and suspends
my spectrum of happiness.

Dripping in a towel
standing beside a cracked door
I inhale the fresh sounds
an the rainbow colors
that ricochet
off the tile walls.

[cogs]

just my thoughts: the 2nd and 3rd stanza have the same number of lines, but the others differ. i'm guessing the longer can be shortened. and in the 3rd stanza, the verbs can be the same form: hangs, catches, suspends. in the first stanza, i didn't know what was in the shower, the echoes or person. you started using puncuation in the 3rd stanza, which is always good, lol.

[Buh4Bee]

Thanks. I made some edits.

[MystyrMystyry]

Interesting subject Buh4Bee: just reflecting on the positive effect negatively charged ions have on us Hot showers are excellent for washing away lots of the day (and yesterday too!), but usually I forget the lines that appear when I'm in one.

You don't need periods at the end of the stanzas, though it doesn't really hurt, but the comma after vapor, is out of place.

Well done (for remembering as well).

[Hawkman]

Hi B4B

The first stanza is a bit of a tangle, syntactically. You have made the echoes the subject of the sentence, consequently it reads as though the echoes are standing in the shower and are difficult to hear from outside. I doubt if this is quite what you intended. You need to rearrange the lines into a more coherent order, and "from behind" I don't feel to be the best word choices. Through would be more explicit. Try this:

Standing in the shower
it's hard to hear
echoes of laughter
through the closed door.

Punctuation is a bit of a problem in the subsequent verses. the semicolon would be better replaced with a comma and some of the commas could be left out. There are a few words which could be trimmed as well:

Slowly, gently,
water washes
dirt away
between nails
and cracked skin.

Inside, the vapour
hangs in the air,
catching and refracting light,
suspending
my spectrum of happiness.

Dripping in a towel,
standing beside a cracked door,
I inhale fresh sounds
and rainbow colours
that ricochet
off tile walls.


Hope you don't mind my topiary, but it's a nice little poem capturing a moment.

Live and be well - H

[Buh4Bee]

Many thanks to you Hawk. It's late now, but I'll edit a bit more tomorrow. Your edits are always informing and I appreciate you taking the time to re-arrange the lines syntactically.
MM, thanks for stopping by.

[Ingrid37]

http://www.heritems.info/avatar2.jpgThanks. I made some edits.

[Buh4Bee]

Troll?