Stay

Hello Flite!

This is a nice piece, it really touches one's heart. However, it is not without error:

Paths that ran, to the riverside. Woods. Marked with trills of our laugh

I'm not sure which of two options you meant here; either "Paths that we ran to the riverside, woods; Marked with trills of our laughter.

or...

"Paths that ran to the riverside and the woods, are marked with the trills of our laughter."

Other than that, I think the other reviewers took care of it.

~Kelpies.

Hey Love,

So I like most of it. I think it's a different direction then what I would have expected from a poem this title, but that's mostly because I wrote a poem with this title and it was different. That one had more emphasis on stay with me, this one has more emphasis on how it used to be, if that makes sense. There are some points that I'd clear up before you turn this in though, and perhaps they're useless points to clear up, perhaps your teacher will go OMG it's a poem! And love it anyway, but I'll point them out here just because I felt like they were a bit more clunky then the rest of the poem and could use a visual check from you.

First thing first, I'm not sure "More" is what you were looking for in this:

I can't cross the bridge on my more, I've never been brave without you.

Mostly because I'm not sure you meant to say More, but perhaps moor. More is not something you can cross or have a bridge too, but a moor is a series of water-land masses that sort of look all like land. They show up in like, Victorian England language, and aren't that popular as a word today, so it's not really a good idea to drop it into a poem like this which is otherwise very personal and center-focused. Also it rhymes with the end of the line before it which makes it really stand out, and standing out is bad in this case because the word sounds wrong.

The next bit is a bit of advice that's not really related to something you have to take into account at all. Actually, I'm just pointing it out because it started a sort of unravelling of the poem for me which may or may not be what you want. The reason I'm pointing it out is because you start to use very, very metaphysical metaphors, like "Of my thoughts" and stuff like that, which really doesn't fit very well in poetry today which by most rights, people want to be very concrete.

The leaves are falling, quick and withered. The husk of a well-loved memory-spiraling in the vacuum of my thoughts

We have seen through this poem that you use a lot of language that's very flowery and not that realistic, like sliding down branches and flight, but this, the second sentence, is a line of prepositional (of, by, around, above, behind) phrases, which not only detaches the meaning from the object, but draws the object farther and father away, like saying the red of the pink of the little child's bonnet on the doll. Where's the red? It's on the doll's bonnet, hidden in the pink, but do you see how detached the other way is to say it? Here we have "Of a well-loved memory" "in the vacuum" "of my thoughts" sooo all of this is thoughts, well loved memories, which don't even exist in a physical plain, but are in a vacuum? That's going to take some head-wrapping to figure out how a non-physical, or an un-physical, metaphysical vacuum can exist for thoughts about memories. It's much cleaner to make a literal metaphor and say something like "the leaves are falling, quick and withered"; my memories drop away. or even "the leaves," my memories "fall, quick and withered." and it also constrains the line to one line instead of word-wrapping.

So that's a little more on the meaning side, this is a more grammatical side. I found a fragment.

Fastened to the epitaphs of our naivety, hopes and dreams.

What's the subject? Is it hopes and dreams? If so, this is in passive voice and that's sort of a really round about way to say something, not very good for a poem where you're trying to be clear for your teacher. So maybe just a passive voice pointer instead of a grammatical fragment, but that depends on if hopes and dreams are actually your subject. If they're not, then WHAT is fastened to the [I don't remember what that word means, will your teacher know it?] of our [stupidity]. Here also you're using a very non-physical item in a physical setting. You may want to consider making this a metaphor as well and make the entire scene physical, like freedom can be physical with flying on the back of the bike. Show us the feelings because this end of the poem needs the lift.

This goes hand in hand with what I was saying before. We need something to hold onto from before that we can really read and attach with, and I think this second to last stanza is really missing it.

Don't try and erase the markings of our past, for they're a witness too.

So what I'm seeing here is that the speaker is accusing the reader of something, trying to erase the marks of the past, and the speaker is detaching themselves from a "we" notion, and going more towards a "Me and You" notion. Before we had this wonderful imagery of things like

Catching the ends of our shirt tails, in sync
with the echoes of our whoops and shouts as we fly across the cobblestoned-bridge

[watch your capitalization by the way, you're highly inconsistent with beginning caps or not.] which is very inclusive. We can feel the wind catching the end of our shirt-tails, or the bike wheels catching it, if we're looking at it that way. We know that thud thud thud thud of something against a bike tire. This isn't a "I am doing this" it's an "in sync" motion, all of us together, reader and speaker.

When we get to this last line of the stanza, we have a very "Don't come any closer!" attitude we're encountering which backs us off from the "in sync" and we have to wonder why would they STAY if that's the attitude, but also, what happened to make them leave?

There's an easy solution, show the marks, and talk about them as Scars, things you cannot erase, ever. Talk about several of them as if they're physically there, like "The scar you left on my arm where you slapped me, or the lips you left on mine from our first kiss." Show us what hurts that others try to take away from the speaker but that the speaker holds onto.

Last, I'd say incorporate "Stay" into the poem more and drop the last stanza or incorporate these lines into other places in the poem. I don't like the use of "ambiguous moments" because of the same reasons I don't like "memory-spiraling" it's suggestive, but it isn't visual. You can make anything ambiguous by just not showing all of it, that's what poems are amazing at, so why say ambiguous? I do like the second line with the imprints of our hands, but I don't like "Woods" as a sentence on it's own, not for a teacher. and I also don't like ... for a teacher, but it is suggestive of the poem continuing on and missing something at the end. I also just don't like ... in poetry. I think it feels out of place a good 90% of the time, so it's a pet peeve.

All in all, I'd say work on developing the message of "Stay" in the poem, why did they leave? what happened? when did they leave? Why are memories the only thing you have? That sort of gets lost on me and I don't really like that it's lost on me when it's such a powerful title. If it was a different title, like I Remember, or something like that, then I'd say it fits the poem, but right now I don't feel this says "Stay" to me because when you're running away to childhood memories to reconnect with someone, you're not asking them to stay in the present, you're asking them to GO back to the past with you, and do something they cannot, relive it with you. The most they can do is try to understand your memories, but they're going to be different no matter what, and things can never stay the same, so the poem feels stilted by the request of the title.

Work on the second to last stanza, it needs some attention and the mood way changes towards something more forward attacking and metaphysical than the rest of the poem, which I don't consider a good thing. Maybe your teacher does. I don't know XD.

Anyway! There's my two cents~ I hope you have good luck with this.