[Certain]

YDK: The sand palace as metaphor was probably the right approach, but your take was a bit too head-on. I think the general simplicity of your writing accented that. Your rhymes and flow were fine, though, and you built your character well. I think it would have been more interesting had the verse been present tense and the story been told by the story teller rather than the protagonist. All of your action happened in the past or will happen in the future, but a more captivating story-telling style is to build off the present. I respect the straightforwardness, though, because I thought you managed to use the photo literally a bit while working on a metaphorical level. That's not easy. Cleaning up your wording could help a lot. "As smiles came few to me less women were choosing me" in particular seemed awkward and clunky, what with "women" in the previous line. Specific images would have helped bring the story along, too. Mostly you stuck to common descriptions and built off the reader's own views of things. Details are the key to great imagery. But this was a good effort as you continue to get back in the swing of things.

Scripter: Tackling this topic by talking about being a single grain of sand is sort of akin to seeing a tree but not the forest, and I liked that. This was a very creative way to handle the topic, and that's the name of the game in these leagues. I wish your rhymes matched your diction. They were too simple, and exploring with multiple-syllable rhymes and internal rhymes would be a big help to smoothing out your flow and making your verses more readable. But the writing was pretty cool. You had a lot of good one-liners and images, though there also were a share of clunk ones like "keeps dreams and hoping key." I think you have a lot of potential here, but fleshing out your content would have helped in this case against an opponent who told a more complete story with better rhymes.

Vote: YDK