"Don't waste my time..." and "You only have yourself to blame..." are horrible indictments of a pair of parents steeped in a culture of "tough-love" neglect. Again, you hold true to the metaphor. The reader understands the "back pain" represents extreme emotional burden, but it is still couched in physical terms. It would have been easy to change over to speaking in emotional terms at this point and abandon the metaphor. The fact that you stayed on target is admirable, indeed.

The strength that is shown as the speaker continues "to crack my back all by myself" brings hope to the reader. The piece doesn't end with rainbows and unicorns; another good choice, because life is rarely like that. But it doesn't end with surrender and self-destruction, either, which is too often how hard times end. We are left with the image of a young man bearing up best he can when he has found no one else to help.

The pain of abandonment is intimated, but not harped on; I think that was another good choice. In a lot of writing about personal challenges—mine included—writes can get all wrapped up in the emotion and swamp the reader with smarmy effusiveness or tarry depression. Your choice to demonstrate quiet, grim determination lends further reality to a piece we can already all relate to very well.

By way of constructive criticism, I would observe that this could work better as prose by adding a bit more detail—not too much, but perhaps a line or two—and reducing line breaks to make fuller paragraphs, more complete thoughts. On the other hand, it could be pruned a bit into lives of verse without losing the overall impact. Eliminating articles and shorting phrases would help or rearranging existing wording to offer a rhythmic cadence.

Story Arc: This is more of a vignette than a story. As such, the classic concept of the arc does not apply. However, the scene is articulated superbly.

Characters: The characters are described in detail both through exposition and action. We are able to clearly see how each is acting and how each behaves normally.

Setting: There are 2 settings—the circus and the room the man and woman are in. Each setting is sketched more than defined. This actually works well because it allows the reader to focus on the important elements of the story—the characters and their behaviors—as opposed to tiny details like what color the pen is or the length of the circus woman's hair.

Action: This being mostly a vignette, the action is emotional. The memory of the strong man and woman contains enough action to explain the point, but the action does not evolve the story. In the context of this piece, the emotional snapshot is much more effective than a journey.

Conclusion: Truth is a perception, but only the people on the inside of the facts know the real truth. The point of the story—that apparent roles are often reversed in truth and that strength is not always where one expects to find it—is gently stated, leaving the reader on a positive note

In the second-to-last sentence, you have a rogue "s" between "play" and "croquet."

In the third paragraph, you have I"ll instead of I'll. You'll want to replace the quotation marks with an apostrophe.

"silent dreams with only a bottle / for company" Been there, done that. Far too many times and for far too long.

"loneliness lurked in the courtyards of half / erected towers" Ah, those almost-plans with almost-lovers. The ones that wash away in the high-tide of the morning light. What a wonderful demonstration of those fistulas in loneliness wherein we waste whatever emotion and dignity we have collected since last time.

"...salt / tainted air" We are so used to thinking of sea air as refreshing, but it can be just as corrosive, as well. And when emotions are raw and encounters are fragile, that air can corrode any honesty simply by way of it's pseudo-romantic tang.

"Go ahead and pray, Eric. You've been kicking that dead horse for the past two decades topside; might as well try riding it out of hell, now that you're here. Even if it doesn't work, it's something to do."

The persona of the poem speaking to the other person: "you threw that napkin at me"

The persona of the poem thinking in his own mind: "and you wondered if she would like spiced hot tea as much as you did"

You need to pay better attention to paragraph breaks. Paragraphs should break when one complete thought ends or when there is a switch in dialog. For instance:

"Stop laughing, it's not fair. Why do you get a cool fake identity, and I'm stuck with this?" "Hey, being kind isn't a bad thing,"

is better presented as

"Stop laughing, it's not fair. Why do you get a cool fake identity, and I'm stuck with this?"

"Hey, being kind isn't a bad thing,"

Watch your tense agreement. You switch between present and past tense sometimes.

I felt your dialog was pretty good. You selected the right vocabulary for the demographic you were writing about. The modifiers for the speech, such as I huffed in annoyance, lent a reality to the characters.

"God, I hate to love dimples." I really liked that line; it seems to foreshadow a conflict between teh necessity to kill Alexander and the potential to fall for him, instead.