When the candle of your life blinked out,
it made the pinprick in my heart swell
into a gaping black hole I didn't know
I had the space to feed.
The stars of my mind flashed out of being,
and more black holes engulfed my universe.
They say you went with a smile,
so radiant,
it scorched the Milky Way.
Does that explain why the stars in my sky-
the very ones you strung to the clothesline of the night canvas-
to chase away the bedtime monsters when I was a kid-
are now charred remnants of a broken past
with too much love that erupted my sky all at once?
Overdue love is a firecracker,
a brilliant supernova,
ignited by the gunpowder of slumbering emotions
interred in the deadened winter forest of my heart
and exhumed by the gravedigger called Grief.
Denial,
Anger,
Bargaining,
Depression, Acceptance
are matchsticks to turn a spark into a forest fire.
Your death paintballed the backdrop of my essence a bloody rainbow,
each shade, too brilliant and transient to preserve in my roll film memory,
But,
I will never forget the red.
Slipping,
sliding,
dripping,
clinging to my whitewashed soul,
now soiled with Grief's wine stain kiss.
Three years later, every day is a masquerade.
I slip on a white mask
to hide
the marks of Death’s macabre palate,
but the ligatures leer at me in the mirror each morning.
They say that in space, you hear no noise
Lost in the labyrinth of my own galaxy,
I learned that silence is the most haunting music,
a ghostly orchestra conducted.by the jukebox of my memories
Now, the only sound I hear is howling.
When the pack of wolves come for dinner,
the hole expands to accommodate them.
The last thing you taught me was
Grief is a shapeshifter,
Grief is both teacher and tormentor.
Grief is the fever I don't know how to break.
Grief is the knife of remembrance,
all too happy to carve me like the Thanksgiving turkey,
slicing my bones into lace ribbons.
Grief is a matchstick to send me up in the sky,
to incinerate me into gunpowder ash.
Grief is the thief of innocence.
Grief is the pack of wolves that comes howling for dinner,
making the black holes expand to accommodate extra company.
Grief is the pair of Alpha and Omega wolves,
gnawing on my bones,
fighting each other for the leftovers
of my skeleton.
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140,084 Literary Works • 672,994 Reviews
Hello, bluewaterlily. I'm here because you have asked me to review your poem. I must say that I really enjoyed it. The flow was very nice and the imagery was as well. I'm not all about free verse writing because frankly I like when they rhyme >.< but I liked this one a lot. And I have some tips for you...
This wasn't such a good way to start off your poem because you want to grab someone by the way you word things, especially in a poem. Also you have 9 syllables in the first two stanzas, 11 in the third, and 6 in the fourth. When you do free verse writing it's important to have a flow and having a good pattern of syllables will help with that a lot.
Love this one btw. <3
I'm not sure why you have hyphens there but if you meant for them to be dashes then you'd put two hyphens.
I was confused as to what the question was because you put so many words in the middle.
You should have a dash after acceptance because you have a list at the beginning of a sentence.
"wine stained kiss" I think is the right way to say that.
No period is needed after conducted.
I don't know what to say here really but I think you should work on this because it didn't really give the poem a worthy ending. "of my skeleton." just doesn't look or sound satisfactory. I enjoyed this piece but you should work on a good format too. Make the format interesting, more exciting. Well that's all I have for this review. I hope it helped and wasn't to long for you to read all at once.
If you'd like for me to review another one of your works then please ask in a post.
~Keepwriting
I think I like this title more!
Haha, so do I!
Hi bluewaterlily, Felistia here with a review on your poem.
) I love that you made Grief like a character, one that hides in the shadows and rakes you with it's painful claws. You compered a Grief to a lot of things like wolves which really fleshed out the character and emotion well and helped me picture what the narrator is going through.
This is a really beautiful poem and has so much emotion packed into every stanza. It almost had me in tears because of the concept you decided to put into the poem. You take a lot of time explaining how the narrator is in pain (and I am sure that you were in pain when you were writing this.
I just have one little suggestion and it could just be me when it comes to this. In the line (When the candle of your life blinked out,) you said blinked when describing the flame of a candle going out and I just can't picture that. It makes me think of a light bulb blinking out. Maybe change the word to (snuffed) or (blew)(Terrible suggestions):D That is just me problem and feel free to ignore me.
Over all a great, beautiful poem and I look forward to more of your work. Never stop writing and I hope you have a great day\night.
Lilyyy
Like, I've already said, this has left me in awe. I really don't have anything valuable to add to it because I think this is perfect. Since I am no good at poetry, I'll refrain on commenting on the technicalities, because quite honestly I don't even have anything to add.
Keep up the great work. Looking forward to more such pieces.
Love,
Mia
Thank you so much for your kind words, Shubs. This means so much to me because I poured my soul into this, and I am glad that other people are enjoying this poem. Your comments meant the world to me <3
I really liked this poem : ) I like how you used the universe/outer space to describe grief, and how it is a "shapeshifter", something you both learn from and receive pain from (and all the metaphors you used for grief). A few notes:
-I would stay consistent with your capitalization, which seems to begin with capitalizing after every period: "But" on line 28 and "Lost" on line 41 are really the only ones that seem out of place (I think you might've meant to put a period on line 40? Possible typo?)
-Another typo (pretty sure this time): "conducted.by" line 43
-Since stanzas 9 and 16 are very similar, and the last stanza is also about wolves, I would maybe combine the last two for less repetition/better flow (although it still works the way you have it--just a suggestion :3 )
Overall:
I loved reading this and your metaphors are really creative and amazing! Great job!
Thank you so much for taking the time to read and review. It means the world to me, and I am so glad that you enjoyed this poem.
Also, thanks for pointing out the typos, which I will fix.