Flutter

hey there, shina! long time no see~

first, we've got some big pieces of advice for you to take action on if you want to get toward a good edit.

number one: take out all the line breaks and punctuate this like prose. there are moments where sentences run into one another, and i think it's because the line breaks sometimes make us forget the direction the sentence was going before we broke it up. punctuate it like prose to get it all fixed up, then put the line breaks back in, and that will already be much better.

number two: experiment with taking out as much details as possible to get to the skeleton of the poem. what is the MOST BASIC sentence of each stanza?

for example,

Its wings quiver
like flower petals
Delicate, vein-covered
sheets of gossamer

can be reduced to:
wings quiver
petals
vein
gossamer

the most important parts are kept intact. can you still get a sense of the poem with just these parts? absolutely. however, i think you'll find that when you try to do this with the fourth stanza especially, you'll find that the action doesn't really carry through the skeleton.

this will be especially effective if you try to turn the stanzas into prose-style sentences. then the first stanza would be: "It's wings quiver". what's the next one? follow the action through, one stanza to the next, to really get to know the meat of the poem, add some if you're missing some, and tweak some if it's not quite what you want.

now, all that said, here are some smaller comments i have about this poem.
firstly, gossamer made me think this was a dragonfly from the very first stanza, but it turns out it's a butterfly! in your experimentation with finding the beauty of a butterfly, you should specifically focus on what makes a butterfly different from all other bugs. what words can you use from the very beginning that will make sure i know it's not a dragonfly, but a butterfly? can you do that?!

next, there's a fine line between appreciation and silly obsession, and i think at some points this poem seems overblown. i think there's merit in exaggerating the PACE at which this happens, but not the drama of it. it's a butterfly -- not a changing world. so you can feel the throbbing of your heart clearly because you're trying to be very still, but "like a knife" doesn't fit with the tone of what's going on in my opinion. it's not revenge or murder. find a simile that has a softer, more anticipatory tone. every single word in your poem should / can serve to heighten your desired tone.

all done~ message me with any questions, and good luck!