taught me how to breathe

Hello!

This is a beautiful poem with such rich, delicious imagery.
I think it's kinda perfect already, but I'll try to help in some way. Honestly, I wouldn't take my advice unless you want to overhaul the whole poem. As it is, all the things I'm about to complain about WORK /because/ they're all together. The superlong sentences wouldn't work unless you had a train-of-thought sort of thing going on, with extra words and things that don't quite connect logically. But because together, and because it's obvious they were done on purpose, those things both work.
The rest of this review will be me contradicting what I just said.

SO.
I agree with Nutty that the sentences are too long. You read, and read, and read, and you never get to stop. I think there's 6 periods in the entire poem. And the only "short" sentence is the very first line. It's good to vary your sentence lengths. It keeps the flow fresh.

This is very wordy, and at the end, I wouldn't be able to tell you what it was really about. That's fine if you really just want it to /feel/ dreamy and beautiful, but if you want to actually get a real point or narrative across, you need to cut down on words that are less important. Also, if you want to keep the reader's attention, it might be good to make it a bit shorter. If /I/ was picking the parts that had the least impact on me, I'd probably cut out the "holding hands" to "inconceivably full" section, and any parts that go with that. It feels like that part doesn't fit as well with the story of stars etc.

So yeah, just cutting down on extra words. Try reading the sentences and writing them as if they were prose, so the reader can easily grasp the point of a particular sentence or line.

I don't really have much else to say though. Reading this just made me feel comfy, and I like the line about drowning in neon. I thought that was really cool.

Hope this helps somewhat. I really liked this poem. Keep writing!

~fortis

you're blowing my mind with your art <3 this is so good.

Hi, Hex!

Okay, so I find it harder to review things I like, for some reason. So I may struggle a bit here, especially since I'm pretty new to poetry myself.

Okay the first thing I want to address is the shape of the poem- I've been staring at the way it's structured trying my hardest to find a shape. It's quite elegant- there's only a few full breaks so you can almost trace a line from top to bottom. Maybe it's the star theme within the poem that's got me thinking of it, but it reminds me of the milky way.

This does have a kind of implication, though; it feels to me as if with the careful way you've structured the lines, and the fact that the sentences are quite long in themselves- this is a poem to be seen, not spoken. Reading it aloud feels a little overwhelming. From the first word, I'd want to read right down to "bone", which is quite a lot of imagery crammed into one breath. This continues throughout the poem, giving it great momentum- perhaps maybe a bit much, since there's not many places I'm encouraged to stop and think about the lovely images you're presenting.

The imagery, by the way, is pretty great. You're at times delicate;
"struggling like butterflies in the morning dew" and othertimes quite visceral;
"a half collapsed lung struggling to keep sharp exhales slicing the membrane" and what's more, these are presented right next to each other, giving a interesting one-two rhythm.

Beginning from "holding hands, perspiration dripping" down to the end of the passage, I'm enjoying the tidal imagery- which is quite fitting when talking about celestial bodies.

I love the line;
"there's a kind of love that sucks you dry like marrowless bone
or sunflowers who have forgotten the direction of the sun."
From here, though, we shift suddenly from this yearning, hopeless, overwhelming sense of love to a more familiar, domestic, hope-filled one with baked stone wall gardens and summer imagery, quite stark from the winter you've been presenting so far. This is- almost literally- like a ray of sunshine in an otherwise melancholy poem, and it's refreshing, even if I am left a little confused by the tone shift- as it shifts straight back to imagery of winter and death a few lines later.

Overall I've been trying to decode this poem over a few re-reads, and what I've managed to garner is you seem to be relating the death of the star betelgeuse to a tragic romance, and I'm digging it. I'm enjoying the fact that the poem is steeped in imagery and references to stars, celestial beings and such- common symbols in romantic poetry- somewhat indirectly. I almost said without directly invoking stars themselves, but that'd be wrong, since a constellation and a star is explicitly named, but instead you're invoking them directly in an unexpected way and I'm enjoying it.

I'm not super sure I've been at all helpful, mostly I've just been commenting! Perhaps you can figure something out by my rambling, anyhow.

This poem is neat.