Broken Moonlight

Hi Steggy, I saw that you wrote this was in your NaPo thread so I had to come check it out. This poem is a gem. It's short and direct, but in good ways. The combination of mournful and awe-struck tone in this, isn't a combination that's often put together but it really works here.

So, this is short so I'm just going to go line by line and then give some overall thoughts.

in many ways,

A somewhat unassuming beginning. I think the first line is actually perfect for this piece though because it looks like it's the second half of a sentence or conversation. Like the reader missed out on whatever came before it. And that fits with the piece, this isn't at the beginning of a relationship it's right in the midst or maybe the end of one. Actually I even really liked the lower cased beginning too because it went with that idea of being mid-sentence, and also set up a tone of a maybe a cautious? or diminished? speaker.

you were the evening light that
slowly died away and

The way you've broken up the lines is a bit jolting here, but it makes the reader go on to the "slowly died" part that sort of diminishes the line before it. So the reader goes on a bit of a roller-coaster "evening light"-> Ahh poetic, lovely, positive... then "slowly died" -> oh no forboding and more negative. I like that back and forth nature of it because it isn't expected.

came back in the beautiful
morning sunlight where you

these two lines do the same flip-flop negating thing as the two lines above, but I don't think it's quite as successful. For me the word "beautiful" also seems a bit shallow or hollow here too, readers already probably associate the sun with being positive and pretty so describing it as beautiful is almost redundant. Is there a more emotional adjective that could be here?
I also wonder if moving "held me" up to the line with "morning sunlight" might be a more interesting line break. I don't love the line break at beautiful either, something just doesn't quite gel there.

held me in your arms. unsure and alone,

I really like the paring of being held in your arms but still being alone -- that is a super sad description, but also poignant. Ascetically it looks a bit strange to put "unsure and alone," out there without a capital letter right after the period, but it kind of fits with the language/tone being used too.

we fell under the tide of love until
it pushed us out as the moon sank higher into the

I like that the poem continues to move as far as action, so that the reader must stay engaged. I don't love the line-break after "the", I think there are other places you could break it to highlight a more interesting word. I'm also a bit confused about the "pushed us out" --- out of what? I know it's a metaphor, but I don't quite know if that means the ocean or back on shore. Is the "void" in the next line the ocean? I would almost take the word "out" away so that the reader doesn't have time to question the mechanics of the metaphor before getting to the last line.

void known as fear.

The ending feels very final. It's also a bit unexpected (which can be a good or bad thing), when reading this poem the reader has hints (like the word "broken" in the title) that this relationship will not end well for the speaker, but they have to watch it play out. There's also not really too many hints of the speaker being "fearful" before the last line.


So overall, I really liked the intense language and direct imagery in this poem. It felt really emotional, and at the end as a reader I felt like I had a really clear idea of what the poem meant. (I interpreted the poem being that the speaker is in a relationship and sort of gets swept up into it, maybe realizes they're in love and then *boom* they realize that love is a scary and vulnerable place to be and feel afraid.)

One issue that I have with the poem, is I don't feel like the mechanics of your metaphor 100% work. For instance, in line 3 it says the light "slowly died away"... which makes it seem like this break-up/falling out/realization was a slow one. Then in the 7th and 8th line language like "fell under the tide" and "pushed us" make this falling-out seem like it happened really quickly.

It also seems like it's all kind of a mixed metaphor too. At first the person/subject is described as light (lines 2-5) then the moon (the source? of some light) causes the subject and speaker to be pushed into fear. So it's not clear what the moon is a metaphor for, and then light seems to be used as a metaphor in two sort of contradictory ways. This could just be me misinterpreting something on my part though, but I thought I would add that.

Really nice job on this piece, I'm glad you brought it back from NaPo! Please let me know if you have any questions about my review.

~alliyah