Young Writers Society

Hi alliyah! I thought I'd come give this delightful poem of yours a bump out of the Green Room!

So I've been staring at this poem for several minutes now, trying to figure out what it reminds me of, and I've just realized what it is: the way it's formatted visually looks a lot like the bark on a birch tree to me.

Especially the fact that it's set up as one long vertical column adds to that effect, as well. I'm not sure that was on purpose - it does tie into the driftwood image, but other than that trees aren't featured too heavily and certainly not birch trees specifically. Regardless though, when I noticed that it made me smile, because I have a lot of positive memories associated with birch bark c: The indentation also has the effect of making it seem like words are jumping away from the reader, out of reach, which reflects the topic very nicely.

In terms of interpretation, I found this poem to be fairly direct. The narrator talks a lot about how they have a tendency to grow attached to people, things, places, that always end up leaving them. And to make matters worse, they seem to be aware that this is going to happen well before it does, which makes it all the more painful when someone or something leaves and they know it's their fault they let themself grow attached in the first place. If I were to read a bit farther into it/project my personal experiences, I feel like the poem also touches on that the fact that self-awareness alone doesn't save you from anything; just because the narrator knows they do this, knows it will happen, doesn't stop the things in their life from leaving.

I think the line(s) "i am afraid i'm only here today with the fireflies & will be gone tomorrow with the sand" adds a really interesting second dimension, which is that the narrator feels like their identity and existence is tied in some meaningful way to the things they fall in love with. When the fireflies leave, for example, the narrator thinks a part of themself does as well. So there's a thread of codependency/lack of individuality in the poem too I think.

If I may just gush about little details for a second! "ghost-steps" is so evocative oh my goodness. I'm a sucker for joining words with a dashes in poetry and this is no exception. Also the use of &'s instead of 'and's is a lovely little poetic touch - it doesn't feel overused, either, and the way that it always appears at the start of an indented phrase makes me feel like it's a chain link that's trying to bridge the gap if that makes any sense at all. Also the rhyming! Makes the poem feel so much more melodic, and I like how subtle it is and how it's visually hidden because of the formatting. I think this could be really beautiful if read aloud; and it would be a cool opportunity to see how you could incorporate the sense of white space orally.

Critique-wise: this is excruciatingly nitpicky, so I would like to preemptively say I don't really have any major critiques at all! But I wanted to do my best to give some kind of constructive criticism regardless xD

This is actually something you mentioned in a review to me I believe? but it's that if you use some kind of text formatting whether that be italics, underlining, bold, all-caps somewhere in a poem, it's really gonna stand out if you don't use that same formatting choice at other points in the poem. Which is the case with "they know" right at the start of the poem. Not necessarily a bad thing if you feel that's a really important phrase, but I personally feel like the fireflies knowing the narrator's habits isn't the biggest plot point for this poem. <.< So potentially incorporating italics in a couple other places could make it feel more natural for the poem!

I have genuinely scoured my brain for like 20 minutes and I can't think of anything else to improve upon...so I feel like anything at this point I do critique would be majorly contrived. So I'm going to end my review here - but if there's anything you'd like me to elaborate on or something specific you wanted feedback on that I didn't cover, let me know!

Best,
hatch