Young Writers Society

You made a lot of conscious decisions in this poem (as I've seen from your comments below), and I'll try to keep those in mind.

Take with salt; mind the edges.

"Can we lay down for a while?" I said.

"I said" is really, really boring here. You use it to some meaningful effect above, but repeating it again here just detracts from that. You could use "I asked," for instance, but that's still not a great improvement.

I think the best thing you can do is to remove the dialogue marker entirely. Just leave the question there - never mind who asked it. (The "who" pales in significance to the "we," in this case.)

[...]to dismantle our empire.

Knowing Star Wars and the lore around it with some (limited, but loving) intimacy, I can't understand how the Rebels would feel attached to the Empire. It is a manifestation of all that is wrong and evil and dark in the Galaxy. It murdered their peacekeepers, their protectorate, and wrested control over their massive intergalactic congress by force and fear, then imposed far-reaching and restrictive military control.

So... "our empire?" As if somehow it is dear to them? And they are "pained" to "dismantle" it? I do not understand. If this is a metaphor for something different - suppose the empire is meant to symbolize their relationship - that is lost to me. It does not follow.

I also agree with one of your previous reviewers that the parenthetical aside is slightly confusing. That said, I don't think there's an obvious way to improve that, and it does work as-is.

He had gathered up my belongings
in white plastic satchels before I arrived.
My head drifting in space,
I picked up the bags before I left
finally.

I feel that I only partway understand your meaning in this stanza.

I get that he has packed up her things, that they are ready for her, and she is left in an awkward, uncertain place - her head adrift.

But you never provide an impetus. I can infer, from my knowledge of Star Wars, what that might be, but it takes a little too much effort, and doesn't fill in all the blanks.

So she's being sent away - not just leaving on her own - and the significance of that only really just hit me. I understood that this was mimicking, in part, the scene between Han and Leia before Han is frozen in carbonite. But that scene doesn't directly relate to dismantling the empire. And Leia is not being sent away; Han is being imprisoned.

Not that the analogy is necessarily poor, but the connection you are making to that scene is weak. It doesn't fully explain itself. You need to add more to it - not necessarily making this a longer poem, but merely one which stands on its own better, which does not require logical leaps from a relatively unrelated scene in Star Wars to the events unfolding as I read.

It begins and ends quite capably, this. It's the meaty part in the middle that runs a bit thin.

I find myself wondering a few things - none of which are necessarily bad questions to leave to the reader:

For one, is he breaking up with her and sending her out? Or something else?

Is he at risk of dying? Is he about to perform a significant function? Strike back against some other force? Or is the meaning simpler than that?

Is she weeping for herself (for her pain), or for him?

Really, the most of it is just wondering whether "I know" is an acknowledgment, or a reciprocation. Which is a powerful device. I really like that part of the piece - and it's honestly that element alone which makes me feel that this poem has a salvageable core, in spite of the fact that it isn't all there yet.

Perhaps you meant for the poem to have an undefined center; for the reader to make up the meaning. But I still feel you don't have enough crumbs for that to be easily possible.

Altogether, I'd love to see this revised and worked on - improved from its current state to tell more of a story and connect better with its parallel scene in the Star Wars universe. It has potential.

Be forever hortatory,

~Skorlir