What is a summary of the poem "Shake"?

In many poems the hidden meaning is the one most readers
struggle with. Fortunately here, the poem "Shake" by Kelsea Osterman is very easy to
interpret. The poem is very straightforward in meaning.

The
narrator, I assume as being Osterman, is speaking to the reader about her experience
with losing love. The love that she has lost is made more permeate with the loss of her
own life. (Now, readers know that she does not actually commit suicide given the poem
exists as a present tense voicing of her experience as she cuts the flesh of her wrist
repeatedly.

Osterman speaks of the initial cut to her wrist
forcing her body to shake. She watches as the blood drips to the floor as she takes the
blade to her wrist again.

Metaphorically, the cutting of
her wrist mirrors the pain that she experienced when she lost the love of the one whose
words caused her enough pain to symbolically take her life (the life of her heart and
love).

She wishes to kill the pain that she feels brought
on by the words of her love; and by draining herself of blood she is also draining the
pain that the loss of the love brought upon
her.

Simplistically, the poem recalls the pain of a lost
love and the actions one will take to rid themselves of the pain. Osterman could have
left the poem as a suicide note, or as a reflection on how she was able to release the
pain by causing pain to herself.

Regardless, the poem seems
to mirror the work of the Confessional Poets given the poetry is all about personal
experiences and typically dealt with themes such as death, depression, trauma, and
personal relationships. These were new subject areas in literature (Confessional Poets
emerged during the 1950s and 1960s) given that many times texts were not typically
written from such an honest and open first-person point-of-view. In this type of poetry,
authors dealt with very personal and sacrificial writings in which, basically, they
"spilled their guts".