it takes me someone calling out your name for me to notice you,
this isn't what we used to be, but it's the truth i'm breathing now;
if i knew of this day beforehand, would i have still seen it through?
the man I know better than myself, being just a stranger somehow.
but there was a time when i didn't know the colour of your eyes yet
they looked black on the surface, and i didn't care to dive in them;
i thought it a jest when you claimed they matched with your brunet
a wonder that only the sun could unfold, much like a disguised gem
you used to wave with a smile, but you barely look my way anymore.
i came to realise my love was never the problem, as i always thought;
for you were busy roaming the seas, while i waited for you on shore,
should've known then- you weren't the answer to my prayers i sought.
i suppose it's silly, but there's an unmet desire i still struggle to fight.
going back to the night you were to lay alongside me, but instead-
i dozed off too early and woke up to your eyes brown under sunlight,
dreaming of sleeping together & your brown eyes beside me in bed.
with all this time between us- we're much beyond saving, my love.
i don't even know who you are today, and so i ought to play it coy,
a wager of my fragile heart- i can't do it, my sweet summer dove;
like the sophomore me would have, on a certain brown-eyed boy.
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This is so beautifully painful. The way you go from "brown-eyed boy" to "stranger somehow" wrecked me.
I especially love "you were busy roaming the seas, while i waited for you on shore" - that line feels like a whole story.
The detail about the eyes changing in the sunlight is so tender and real.
This isn't bananas, this is heartbreaking in the best way. Thank you for sharing it.
Hey, Alex! I don’t remember if I ever read one of your poems before, but if this is the first one, I chose a banger!
This poem is beautiful, showing how much distance there is between the narrator and their lover. I especially love the way you weave in those moments where their love was powerful, like sleeping together, calling them “sweet summer dove”. But the narrator sees that they are becoming strangers and their love is becoming lost.
I wonder if you could spend more time on their relationship: first meeting, the moments where they were happy, as we start to see them drifting apart. And you can weave this into the poem as a reminiscence. I feel like it could evoke a powerful emotion in the reader.
The imagery and figurative language is fantastic. Happy Review Day!
I forgot to reply to these in the best of the review day, time to correct it! Thank you Valkyria, for the time and effort that went behind this review. I really loved all your compliments. I definitely agree that the narrative is lacking here, I was hoping for the ambiguity to encourage imagination and interpretations. I feared the anchored imagery of the brown eyes would get lost if the deeper aspects of the love are revealed, and used it as a symbol that the narrator doesn't want to remember the details of the past except for a yearning for the brown eyes they did sometime long ago. It's definitely a limitation of the poem though, perhaps I'll come back to add a stanza for it later. Thank you again, glad to hear you liked reading!
Hey Alex! I can't believe I haven't read any of your works yet. Incoming review!
I love the romanticisation of brown eyes as a brown-eyed person myself. The story of meeting, to love, to distance in only four stanzas is impressive. With that said, lets get on with the review!
I'll start with what I liked. I appreciated the rhyme scheme with each stanza having an abab format. I think it breaks up the thoughts of the poem nicely with how long each line in the stanza is. If there was a more basic aabb rhyme, I think it would have been too nursery-esque. I had to get used to the line length, particularly because I and many others here write with much shorter lines and more frequent line breaks. But the way you write did not take away from the structure or the feelings of your poem in my opinion.
I really like the imagery of this line. Honestly, its something I wish I saw more in your poem with figurative language. You've got a couple of similes and metaphors, but I think I'm really wanting a theme to tie it all together. You could contrast brown/blue eyes and make blue eyes seem cold and distant while brown eyes are more welcoming like the shore. I'm a huge sucker for metaphors so that's why I'm suggesting it.
One last critique is kinda niche, but I think your poem could benefit from being in a particular meter. I almost thought your poem was in iambic but the syllables we're stressed and unstressed in the way I thought they'd be. If you're confused about meter, don't worry, I usually am too and don't use it much in my own writing, but I think your poem would be nice with a BA-dum-BA-dum-Ba-dum meter. If you catch my drift. Someone else probably has a much better explanation of meter haha.
But anyway, that's it from me today. I really like your poetic voice and I hope to read more from you in the future. Anyway byeeeeeeee
Hey FireEyes, thanks for the wonderful review! Longer lines were actually a new try for me too, but after imitating some poets for the poetry hashtag I thought I could pull it off. Plus I've been a little jealous of the longer lines seeming so effortless, so it's about time I gave them a try. I understand your ask for more imagery, and I've been thinking about it myself. I liked your suggestion about contrasting eyes, I might use them to add a more scenic and flashback stanza to the poem sometime. About meter, that's the big complicated elephant I'm still trying to avoid dealing with. I know, I'll probably learn it some day or perhaps it'd make more sense as I write more poems but it I just can't control it in now in a way that complements my storytelling style. Still, I really appreciate all your insights!