I remind myself often, during
candle lit rituals, that only the
ripe and sweet fruit is ever
taken from the branch; I have
been rotten since I was nine.
I watched as your flesh was
torn apart by gnashing teeth,
only to be tossed, wastefully,
into the dirt. Everyday I
wish you had pruned instead.
I fall to my knees, memory
is stained glass. I worship
your absence against all you
taught me; to a false god,
grief has made me disciple.
I speak, naked, at the pulpit,
to a hundred pairs of eyes.
This is our communion; these
words my prayer: it goes
unanswered all the same.
I would condemn myself
to sin, and partake in the fruit,
if it promised the wisdom
to discern evil, and to discern
who I am without you.
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140,259 Literary Works • 673,077 Reviews
Oh my goodness, I am in love with your poetry!! Seriously, everything you write is so amazing!!! I connected and related so deeply to this poem. Let's jump right into the review!!
Throughout the whole poem, you use this wonderful fruit and tree symbol. You state that you wish someone had pruned instead of being eaten, where they were discarded. And this was what made you rotten and undesirable from the branch. I am unsure of the exact situation you are writing this based off of, but to me, this poem speaks so well to grief and yearning for a different outcome or live, that you cannot even imagine.
These lines really stood out to me:
If I typed up a complete version of all of my thoughts, YWS would probably crash from being overwhelmed by the character count XD But (and this could be totally different that how you felt writing this- just how my mind interpreted based on my life) this really captures that feeling of wanting to love someone who has ruined your life. In a way, sometimes we worship our own trauma. We cannot let it go and it becomes out God, our religion, forsaking what we worshipped before and becoming these people, not even aware of our own nakedness that others see. Grief makes us devout followers, except we are unable to leave, although we dont realize that.
This poem could reflect someone that you knew who died when you were young, or it could represent yourself and a way that you changed when you were 9. Sometimes we are forced into things we dont want to be a part of, or we are made into people that others want to be. I wonder who I would be if I could have shaped myself, it I hadn't been picked from that tree so early?
We can live in this ignorance for a long time. Some people stay there forever, but this poem captures how I feel so so well. This last stanza was my absolute favorite <33 Overall, I love this poem. It hit me really deeply.
Please post more poems soon!! And have a fantastic day!
Your friend,
Ellie
ahhh ellie, thanks for the review. it's so interesting to see how you interpreted the poem : ))
Wow this is amazing. It almost brought me to tears. The way you paint the pictures with religious imagery is powerful
Wow this is amazing. It almost brought me to tears. The way you paint the pictures with religious imagery is powerful
Hello, farq!
I'm Wist and I'm here to review this lovely poem you got here. This is such a beautiful poem that resonates with me. It tells an authentic story of grief and how it affects your religion and the foundations of your sense of self. It's such a powerful idea. I just adore it. With that said, let's get into it.
This line is so incredibly powerful and sad. The idea that someone feels so bad about themselves at such a young age adds so much to the poem but makes the mood so somber.
This is such powerful imagery. It creates an idea of how much this person was valued by whatever force caused their death. It was just a senseless tragedy.
This is another raw, powerful line. I love it.
This ending stanza is perfect. I couldn't think of a better way to end it. It ties together all of the religious imagery as well as the idea of being lost due to grief. It's just perfect.
Overall, the only thing I would change about this poem is the formatting of the plain text. If you broke that into stanzas, it'd be much easier to read. But other than that, there's nothing I would say needs changing. Great job! Thanks for publishing; I enjoyed reading.
Happy Writing!
Wist
hi wist,
thanks so much for your review, i don't usually write poetry so i'm glad to see you enjoyed reading this one. i'm glad that you were able to pick out all the themes i tried to show in the poem. and ahh! i tried to break up the stanzas of the plain text, i have no idea what happened there after i posted it !! you're so right; it's so hard to read when it's not broken up. oh well, i'll have to figure it out lol!
@farq4d
to separate stanzas in poems on YWS you have to put something in-between the lines, like a dash, tilde, emoji, etc. Here's an example: