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i write pages and pages - all about the poetry i see strung out between your stars when they catch the beam cast out of my lighthouse
(searching, searching, searching)
seafoamed skin softly nestled at the edge of an undertow - my imagined safe harbor, my elusive oasis. i dive in head first, forget to breathe.
before i reach you, i am almost consumed. whether we are drowning or in love, it ends the same way.
me: the boat bobbing on waves, waiting for its siren - finally come to help it escape the desolate existence.
gulping down air like wine, waiting for this drought inside me to end.
you: the creature swimming through the water sitting at the bottom of my stomach,
the water sloshing in my ear canal,
the water running through my very veins.
at no point does it feel like we were meant to be anything but exactly this - skin dried out and split apart suddenly drenched
the deluge sluicing down the bridge of your nose and off the edges of your eyelashes - all of it getting stuck like crystals in my hair.
eventually, we reach land, we create a home, we finally dry off our bones.
i could trace every curve of your spine into my palm until i am worn to dust and it still not be enough.
you, with my paradise hidden under your skin. my whole eternity laid like brick against a dark, starless night.
no clouds, no atlas, no big dipper needed. your fingertips pointing me back to dry land.
maybe it's not me who lingers, but time just slipping out from under my feet faster than i can stand. to prevent myself from falling in
all i need to do is lean into you, let your cast net catch exactly what you thirsted for. Me, my lips, the places between my ribs.
all our words layered between sips off my moonbeamed collarbones.
we taste of lavender and ambrosia and honeysuckle and jasmine and caramel and clean sheets and of i’m never leaving this bed again -
thank fucking god you wrap your arms around me and don’t let go. thank the fucking lord i hold out despite the hurricane. afterwards,
there is nothing but nectar and sweet eddies left, swirling pools i drown in again and again and again. you always drag me back to the surface.
we will spend our entire time together walking this earth, heading towards the horizon - dreaming -
looking up and writing what we think is a destiny into a constellation.
a life line tied up in heartstrings and left in the sun. bleached to hell - but oh, so loved.
i am no longer waiting for it to make sense. maybe it's yours, maybe it's mine - it doesn't matter.
we weave it into our skin so we never have to be without each other again.
we learn, after awhile, it really doesn't matter how many times i repeat your name like a prayer
nor how many times i feel your syllables roll off my sea salt coated tongue.
you will always look at me like it's the first time i've ever said it.
darling, i would know you and your name even if i forgot every word i ever knew.
toss me in a bottle out to sea, i will always end up on your rocky shore.
Hello ^^ I want to give a short review on this because it really swept me away. Thank you for sharing such an intimate and overwhelming piece!! Reading it felt like being pulled under a tide, not just drowning but also being carried by it—love here becomes so elemental, something that destroys and saves in the same breath. That duality is what makes the poem so powerful: you show love as both storm and shelter, peril and prayer.
What struck me immediately was how the structure mirrors the sea itself. The italics, dashes, and rolling repetitions mimic waves pulling in and out, so the reader gets caught in the rhythm without a pause for air. Sometimes the lines crash with urgency, sometimes they drift calm, but always they feel alive. It doesn’t read like a fixed monologue-it feels like the raw current of thought spilling forward.
Your imagery is what makes the piece so distinct. I love how it stretches between vastness and intimacy-the cosmic (stars, lighthouses, horizons) placed side by side with the deeply human (ribs, collarbones, lips, syllables). It’s mythic and fleshly at the same time, showing how devotion folds into the body, how passion itself becomes a kind of divinity.
The repetition is especially effective when it evolves meaning: “whether we are drowning or in love, it ends the same way” captures that devastation beautifully. At times, though, certain refrains (waves, drowning, stars) circle around the same emotion rather than bending into new shades of it. If each echo shifted slightly, surrender in one moment, rebirth in another, it would give the tide even more force.
The ending, though evocative, didn’t land as strongly for me:
toss me in a bottle out to sea, i will always end up on your rocky shore.
It’s sweet, but compared to the originality of your earlier metaphors, it leans on something more familiar. You’ve already built such a unique world here—I wanted to see that closing line stay inside it. What is your version of the “rocky shore”? The ribs, the chest, the hollow of the collarbone—those images you gave earlier feel even more personal and would give the ending the same intimacy as the rest.
Overall, though, this is breathtaking. It felt like reading a hymn sung underwater, somehow clear enough to rise to the surface. You captured love as shipwreck and sanctuary, destruction and devotion all at once. It’s lush, vulnerable, and cosmic in its scope, but still anchored in the body. A piece I didn’t want to resurface from <3
resubmitting.. sorry forgot to mark as "YES" but this was so beautiful to read
Hi Lady! I've meant to read this for a while and I'm finally here for Happy Review Month
"sitting" feels weak to me in comparison to much of the rest of your verbiage. And it also doesn't convey motion in the way that swimming would seem to imply.
We dry off our bones seemed like an odd choice to me. I know that we say soaked to the bone, or dry as a bone, but worded as it is it almost makes the characters sound like skeletons. However, we just go through discussing tons of body parts like the veins, ears, nose etc, so it seemed an odd way of phrasing it to me. I think even just adding "to" our bones would be enough.
Then, in the second line, I think you are missing a "would" between "it still not be enough".
Im gonna say this to my scoliosed brother-in-law xD
I agree with candyhearts on this line. It is also a bit repetitive since we've already seen nearly this exact imagery of dragging you to shore a few times before. I think something along the lines of "even if I was tied to an anchor, you would pull me to the surface" might be a bit less cliche? I don't know - something to think about.
I love the overwhelmingness of this poem. It feels classic, like it could be put in any time period and would work. I love the use of the word sluicing (underrated imo opinion I just used it two chapters ago haha). The display of love not being happy so much as consuming is more apt in my opinion. Because even if you were to simplify love to happiness, that happiness is of the overwhelming variety. It swells inside you, it makes you want to expend your energy and jump and leap and give it back.
Bottle line aside, I love the constant barrage of nautical and shoreline imagery that hits us like a tidal wave, and ebbs and flows like the tide as we see the danger and power inherent in being so intimate. I like that near the end the poetic language falls off for a second as if there's too much emotion to stay restrained and the main character just bursts like a bubble and it all comes pouring out uncensored.
I also appreciate the formatting of lines here more than most non-rhyming poetry where a lot of the breaks and cuts seem random to me, a poor, non-poetic reviewer xD
I hope this feedback is helpful
~Messy
Hai :3
There’s something really special about this poem. I love the way love is treated like an elemental force, both sacred and dangerous!! The tone is celestial but grounded in the very human need to be held: physically, emotionally, spiritually. The vibe reminds me a bit of Pablo Neruda’s sea poems, but wrapped in modern, confessional softness. The imagery, the cadence, the absolute lushness of the language... I’m so so in love with how vulnerable and endless it feels!!
Love how this opens !!
You set the tone immediately here and it’s so effective!! There's something so solemn and lovely about the image of a lighthouse ~~ Like, it's a warning, a beacon, a place meant to protect, and I love the way it gets reflected back by this person’s stars!! You're out there searching for something, hoping to be seen, and they finally see you. I've seen that motif used so much, but there is a reason why it's so loved; everyone craves a relationship like that.
This is literally one of the most intimate and sensory moments in the whole poem. You let us taste the love here!! I love how it goes from sweet to comforting to downright feral. That's the human part!! I read a lot of poetry where love is painted as gentle and tender, and it definitely can be, but it's great to feel something that is more provocative. That’s the ache after the sweetness, and it’s so raw and so real.
^^^ There’s a lot of beautiful, poetic repetition in this poem (like water / stars / drowning / bones, etc), which gives the poem that dreamy, rolling-ocean quality, but at times it tips from lyrical repetition into redundancy ~~ Like, the ideas are coming back around in similar phrases rather than building momentum or contrast. I feel like that is what's happening here. What is the point of these sensory details beyond setting the scene of how strong your love is?
The narrator is overwhelmed, enamored, worshipful, but we don’t get much contrast or complexity in how the other person feels as well. Which is totally fine for a love poem!! But again, what does that do for the narrative?
Sweet and classic!!
Though, maybe too classic? Like, it doesn’t quite carry the same emotional specificity as some of your earlier lines. The idea of a “message in a bottle” is a bit of a trope, and you’ve already done such a good job creating your own metaphors that I’d love to see something more you in the closing. I don't mind the ending, and I really do enjoy the imagery in the build up, but it doesn't feel like the rest of the poem. What’s the version of “rocky shore” that lives in your world?
This is breathtaking and lyrical and just so human to me though!! I seriously adore your voice and your control over rhythm and pacing ~~ Every stanza flows into the next like a wave and I never wanted it to end. Amazing, amazing work!! ^_^
- Payton
this is such a lovely review. Thank you so much!!!
ahhhh this is beautiful spark!!!