Limerence

This is Kaos here for a review!

I see these types of poems that have a noun or adjective or something of that sort at the top and then the poem. If you're going to do this, then I find the most important part of the poem is capturing that feeling, especially since this is an emotion. Define it. Describe it. I'm not saying that you fail on this aspect, it just should be one that you focus on strongly. For example, your definition of love is not my definition of love, so define what you mean and describe what it's like. Is it soft as a lamp or is it strong like a bonfire that never goes out? The tiny things that you do and the small modifications with you make, how you describe it, makes all the difference.

Your name lives

On my tongue

Just as your words

Are burned in my mind

And my heart wishes that only

Your hands hold mine

The first image here is strong, but the rest of the stanza is weaker and more generic with what it's trying to get across. One thing that I thought of that would help if you expanded on the first two lines. If their name lives on the speaker's tongue, does their name live in the perfume they use or the pet names the speaker calls them? I think it would be beneficial to add into the poem, but it's your choice. The lines three and four aren't really what bothered me, but five and six are what really took a dip here. They're washed out. They've been done before, so spice it up.

Or that you could feel for me

The way I feel for you

I felt a hint of unrequited love here, but there isn't anything more than that. It only got what it needed to get across, and that made it feel lacking. There isn't anything here to make the reader care for the second stanza, no images attached to make the reader have something to go off of. They're throwaway lines that don't have anything else to them other than to serve a simple purpose or to try and get a single thing across.

Just as the sun

Does the moon

For it dies every nightfall

So that his love may breathe

Though he catches glimpses of her

While he’s drowning in the sea

This third and last stanza does better at creating an image, but I didn't really find it connecting too well to the rest of the poem and there isn't really a transition into it. I like the idea of the sun watching the moon while it goes down, but I'm not the biggest fan of assigning genders to the sun and moon or anything like that, maybe that's just me. Another thing is that the images feel vague to me, they aren't vivid. Give us more. Does the moon have craters in it? Does the reflection of the sun or moon appear on the water? I find the sun/moon comparison to be something that can easily get stale as it's been done before, so make it your own by describing them.

The thing is, by the end of the poem I didn't really feel what "limerence" was. Go into further depth about it than what you're doing now, create the definition in words of metaphors and imagery instead of just letting the definition at the top of the poem do it for you. I want to be able to know what limerence is without having to see the definition. That's what this poem should be able to do. On the things that you did well on, like the images that you had here, you did well on.

I hope this helped and have a great day!

Short and sweet--or rather saccharine. This will be an analysis due to lack of major content.

Your first stanza begins with the greatest lines in the piece: Your name lives / On my tongue. Which are truly moving lines, but the stanza weakens from there because you dedicate the second half to setting up a rhyme, and, just with the hundreds of other cases I've come across when poets have attempted this solely to execute rhyme, they've instead executed their potency by sword-to-throat. Now, saying "Your name lives on my tongue as your words are burned in my mind" is absolutely fine, and it makes for good poetry (albeit overdone in the second half, heck, even the first is done quite often, and I praised it anyway), but the following lines:

And my heart wishes that only
Your hands hold mine

were predictable and near-meaningless to the outside reader; and while this may carry all the meaning in the world to you as a writer, author's intentions mean nothing in outward publishing.

Moving on, there's nothing much to note in the interim couplet. Not much content, not much to critique. I think I would have rather seen that in place of the rhyme scheme given in stanza one if I'm being perfectly honest. But it's your poem. Do as you do.

Stanza three is more meaningful and carries more poetic's grace, though the sun/moon comparison in poetry to love is overwrought; it's overwrought for a reason: it works. Even the rhyme works. I'm content with it. You did well here.

Keep writing, and let me know if you have questions,
Ty