sodium light

[red dragon]

I really like the fact that you use spacing to convey that feeling of being breathless, or things going too fast (at least, that's how I felt while reading)
However, I think the longer verse could be shorter. As in... After "against the dark,"
You start a new verse from "someone in there"
And after "from out there"
You start a new verse from "where the light"

It's just my advice and I really like your poem! But having too long verses can bore out the reader, and the effect of things going too fast and being breathless is lost

Oh and also, To further emphasize the feeling of hanging by a thread at the end, a semicolon would be even better than a period.

I should go in;

I stay.

It's like you're standing on the edge of a precipice and you fall with the "I stay"

[red dragon]

Yeah that's actually clever too so I understand your point! Indeed when I re read it, I can feel what you tried to convey
Good job ! 👍

[glacial vault]

In that first stanza alone I love the imagery of the streetlight like a yolk thick and heavy clinging to everything flowing like honey over the path and it also has an interesting potential double meaning with yoke which is often used a symbol to depict subjection or imprisonment like "under the yoke of a cruel master" which plays into the next stanza as you are almost a prisoner stuck in place frozen in amber under the yoke of the yolk of light and your own indecaision follows throughout the entire poem as you become a prisoner of your own loss and inability to take that next step and your own frustration at knowing the path but being unable to walk it, yet also being freed by simply making a choice, right, or wrong making that light then feel just a little more hopeful even if the wounds still bleed.

And it may not be intended but because of the title I see a parallel between being under the sodium light and being under the limelight , it makes me feel like you're giving a grave soliloquy under a phosphorescent stage light , while we the audience are watching you yourself watch the one you've lost it makes the tone of isolation much stronger when I read it that way

I Absolutely love it