I'm new to poetry but I get the feel of a poor relationship from your poem. From my own subjective interpretation, your first two stanzas focus on straining the lack of emotion with subtle imagery for a feeling of inertness and your last stanza feels as if the speaker has given up on relationships due to a recent experience. It's pretty cool and that's about all I can say.

I dig this, the words describe the landscape very well. Part of me wants to take a sharpie and add, “Were they even ever there to begin with?” to the very end.

Hey! 

I'm quite new to poetry, so I won't be able to analyze it as well as some other people, but I do have some things to say.
Overall, I like it, especially the last few lines - the sudden change of tone really strikes the reader with doubt. The comparisons you use earlier on are very pleasing to read aswell, so great job there.
However, as I mentioned before, the last few lines are quite different, so I can't seem to draw many parallels from them to the setting you've provided us with at the start - the flatness, the peaks and valleys, the shore, etc. It feels distant and it's as if these questions snap us back into reality. I don't know, maybe that's exactly what you wanted to achieve? Maybe it's just me and I'm not a big fan of expositions like this?
Either way, great job, keep up the good work!

I read the poem and got the general feeling of an inability to feel joy, then googled your title. You got your message across artistically with the image in your poem (good choice of the word flat and that imagery) and you labeled it with the perfect word, showing it was purposeful. Great job 👍 

Ps. The rest of the poem reads excellently well by the way

The oboe line was the only one that struck me as out of place too. I even frowned at its use, and re-read the line because I have quite a joyful association with the instrument. 

I felt as if you knowingly forced joylessness onto the oboe. Which is why I frowned. 

thanks for the note on oboes. I just picked it based on the flow of words but I'll pare it down some so it makes a little more sense

:) <-- ironic smiley. As a constant user of anhedonia, I really like this poem. It's very accurate and uses very appropriate images to describe its aspects.

Something I don't quite understand is why you use an "oboe" to attach to it a "joyless ode". Oboes are not usually related to monotony. So, while you attempted to relate everything to anhedonia, your first choice of word was a musical instrument many times related to music filled with feelings.

Another part that strikes me as slightly not belonging is "human emptiness". It's philosophically debatable and a bit of a bold accusation toward human beings. But it's ok, I guess. You're the poet. ;)

The rest is awesome and I'd say it's touching but.. eh.. anhedonia. Can't feel shit m8.

WOW!! This was an incredible description of the experience of anhedonia. My goodness, I am truly in awe at the way your similes create a such a poignant sensory depiction of an emotional flattening of the senses. It is almost like an ultimate paradox. The repetition of the word flat creates the tone and gets the point of the theme across while the similes provide the introspection and sensory relation needed to make the poem itself not "flat". I can hear the flat and steady drone of the oboe, see the flatness of a surfboard, and feel its uselessness from lack of use. The sleeping hermit crab emphasizes the "sleeping emotions" and the fact that you used a hermit crab (solitary figure who hides in his shell) was creatively brilliant. Finally the deadpan stare and empty eyes show the emptiness being felt inside. I like the questioning at the end. It brings out the narrator's confusion as to what in the world could have happened to bring him/her to this flat state of mind and heart, althou

I definitely got the feeling of anhedonia from this poem.  I like the metaphors and the feeling of emptiness provided.    

Flat,  
Like an oboe’s joyless ode.  
No ups or downs,  
No peaks and valleys,  
Just the outstretched blank expanse of human emptiness  
Onto which life is projected.  
  
  
Flat,  
Like a surfboard,  
But not the surf.  
I feel no crest, no crash against the shore.  
I am the sleeping hermit crab,  
Content to exist for a while then scurry off to find a new home  
  
  
Flat,  
Like your deadpan stare,  
Empty eyes and emptier conscience.   
Was it on you I spent the last of my feelings?  
Somehow I doubt it,   
But where else could they have gone?  
  
  
  
https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/7v4s42/mirror/
https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/7v3jac/sifting/

Anhedonia