Hello Mary
The ending is blunt and powerful. Its plainspoken pain is unexpected and affecting.
Because the N says she “tried to save her sister”, then I think “sister” must refer to an actual sister or friend rather than the historic sister-poets.
There a couple of places where I get a bit lost. (My sense of direction in poetry is not very sure).
“I hear them call and harmonize, as if they also grew my sound.” The voices of the female poet-suicides are singing in harmony. But the narrator’s voice is described as a “moan”. So I don’t quite see how they grow your sound. (Perhaps their sound is like the sirens luring listeners to their deaths?)
The sentence beginning with “I listen to their final fall” has a series of commas linking ideas and things that I can’t quite join up. There is a list of suicide methods that ends with a net guiding them to shore. But “guide” and “shore”, for me at least , imply a place of safety, a refuge after the perils of the sea, rather than the place that death might take us.
But as I said at the start, the ending packs quite a punch.
Joe
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