the daydreams of a fish (when i open my eyes, all i see is the sky)

Hi canopy! As someone who also loves playing with line breaks and indents, the format of this piece really spoke to me. I like how the decisions you make about spacing influence how a reader may say the lines in their head - the sense of wind and space and movement.

On the subject of wind, one small change to make the first stanza slightly stronger could be to change "gentle wind" to a single, specific word, so that you don't have to use gentle to describe it. A breeze, perhaps, or something more original and poetic. Like your third stanza about the sheets, which I think is one of the strongest parts of the poem and I absolutely love. It conjurs a very vivid image for me.

One thing I am not sure of is "when will I stop liking it here", as I didn't quite understand it in the context of the rest of the poem. In the stanza that follows that, I am also a little uncertain what we are talking about. One thing I've definitely done in my own poems is had lots of ideas happening at once, or maybe one or two stanzas that are less related to the main idea, and so I've ended up removing chunks or splitting them into two poems. I'm not saying I think you should do this here, necessarily; it's just that some parts of the poem feel more connected to each other than others, and sometimes it's worth checking if a poem would be stronger without them, or by giving them their own space in another poem. Less is more, so they say. This might just be me, but I also thought the poem was going to be literally from the point of view of a fish, and so I was surprised to hear the narrator was standing on a balcony!

However, as I said, I love the experimental nature of this poem, and the main themes of longing and warmth and waiting, especially those lines that conjur up very strong images. Great job!

Good morning canopy!
As per usual, lots of likes, no reviews, so here I am.

I like the title. I guess, the way fish sleep, they would see the surface of the water when waking up, which would be their sky, no?
(And isn’t that a metaphor, breaking through the sky to find a completely different world there?)

I love how the first stanza ends on “daydream” like that!
I stumbled a bit over “unpracticed” but then again, that is the whole point, stumbling awkwardly in a dance you are still learning?
I find the question at the end of the second stanza very poignant too! (Even if I have a litany of things I could say in answer =D) (and reading on: so would you, huh?)

I really like the honeyed orange light stanza for how cozy it feels; a memento of what we are missing and just can’t feel. Like what we might imagine this would feel: calming, at home.

I also wonder abt the line abt yearning. Yearning for that feeling that doesn’t come? Or, pretending that you are yearning for something that you don’t have and maybe not even really want? (The unmoored lines drifting rightward might say that you can’t wait for it… But then comes: “when will I stop liking it here” which sounds more like you yearn for the feeling but also don’t really have a concept of what you are missing. More like FOMO than actual need?)

Oh I just said it earlier but it’s interesting you also compare the lack of feeling to losing a home. The cozy feeling from earlier contrasted to “stripped of my home”…


Ahhh canopy. The poem speaks to me so much, I especially like how at the end you tell of what the flight and go rightwards but, as if a fish jumping out of the water, you land back on the ground / the left side of the poem.

I feel like it’s a huge misconception that love is the only thing you need to be happy and if you don’t have it, then you are doomed to a hollow, dreadful life. I don’t love people. I appreciate them and I want them around. I love stories, I love MY stories and I love living. I feel like life is a lot less complicated for me than for anyone else and I like that very much.

Yes, yes I am married and happily so, but that’s bc I found a person who thinks like I do



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