At the end, I realized the moon was never lonely.
I was the one who kept looking at it,
Maybe I’m just living on hope now—
not because I’m fearless of the dark,
but because I’ve spent so long looking into it
that it doesn’t scare me the way it used to.Years passed, yet not my pain. I wish I could be a tree—stand still, cry hard, and die at the end before people realized I had dried.
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141,502 Literary Works • 674,739 Reviews
Hi, mph here, reviewing on behalf of Team Bees!!
This poem is short but sweet, and I think despite its length there is a good bit to unpack!
The first paragraph is definitely my favorite, I think it brings to mind interesting questions about how we personify nonliving things and kind of project our own feelings onto them. I also really like the bit about wanting to be a tree, it’s a very unique way of showing how the character feels. You would expect that the character would want to be a tree because they want to stop feeling, but it seems to me like maybe the character wants to be a tree so that other people can’t perceive them, which is interesting.
I will say there are some things that prevent this from being as strong overall as it could be. There are some really interesting images here, but they don’t connect together as well as they could, and certain lines could be a lot more specific. For example “Maybe I’m just living on hope now” and “Years passed, but not my pain” could be considered kind of generic lines, and as telling the reader how the speaker feels, which isn’t the best thing to do in a poem.
Those are just my thoughts, overall I think this is a really cool piece!!! have a great day/night
Heyy, Aster here! 🎀✨️
Here's my review!
First, I really loved the opening:
Its such a simple but effective reversal, and it immediately made me stop and think.
Second, I liked the idea in the second stanza of becoming accustomed to darkness rather than completely overcoming it. The line “I’ve spent so long looking into it” especially gives the feeling of time passing without making the emotion feel magically resolved.
Third, the tree metaphor at the end is really memorable. The idea of wanting to stand still while slowly fading is sad, but it fits the poem’s themes of time, pain and being unnoticed really well.
Now, onto a few areas for improvement! 🫡
First, “Maybe I’m just living on hope now” feels a little more generic compared to the very distinctive moon imagery before it. I think replacing “living on hope” with a more personal image could make that transition stronger.
Second, the sentence beginning “Years passed, yet not my pain” feels quite abrupt compared to the slower rhythm of the earlier lines. You could give that thought its own space, perhaps: “Years passed.Somehow, my pain did not.” That would also make the shift more impactful.
Third, I think the final tree metaphor could be developed just a tiny bit more before ending. You already have a strong image with “before people realized I had dried,” so perhaps adding one small detail about the tree being overlooked could make the ending linger even longer.
Overall, I really loveddd your piece! It feels intimate, melancholic and thoughtful without trying to explain every emotion to the reader. That moon line is definitely the part that stayed with me the most. Hope to see more from you! 🍀✨️
Reading this feels real, the pain and truth to it is there weather people want to accept it or not. Your right, the moon isn't lonely, but people who are lonely project their feelings onto something to make themselves feel better. When you said
That is a piece of truth to anyone who lost someone in their life. The pain never really subsides and it feels as if someone has torn something from inside you, and it never really fully heals and there's a hole left, with jagged edges and it hurts to think about what you lost.
This line as well shows that, and losing people affects everyone, whether they admit it or not, but hope is what people have left to keep living for, even if they feel like there's nothing left to have hope in.
Never let go of that hope, because when you leave this life, there will be someone who feels the exact same about you. Love is more than just what you have during life, but what happens after. If you don't feel pain a small bit of pain even when you lose someone then you never really loved them, just the idea of having them around. This piece shows life after years of loss and the truth in it should hit anyone hard enough.
I encourage you to keep writing. May peace follow you everywhere.
I really love your first two lines about the moon not being lonely. I wonder if you could expand on that - what about everyone else also looking at the moon, but nobody else knows that's what others are doing? Does the moon know? Does it feel lonely even though it isn't alone, and is there a difference between being alone and feeling lonely that could be explored?
I Feel like the line about the dark could be linked to the moon - are you looking at the moon within the darkness, could the night sky be a metaphor for the darkness you talk about?
I think you could potentially cut the third and fourth lines. They are telling rather than showing, and the parts about the moon and the darkness and the tree are all very visual and make your point excellently without being too direct. I just wonder if you could tie things together a bit more. Where is the tree in this - is the tree in front of the moon, for example, with its branches looking like it's hugging it? Is the moon shining on the tree? I also wonder why the part about the tree is in quotation marks - is someone different saying this, and do you need to tell the reader who this is?
I think there is lots of potential here to go a little bit further with your ideas, perhaps put them all in one scene so the reader can see how these things all connect, and tie things together so the poem has one idea weaving all the way through these different visuals. Great job, keep going!
I love that the emphasis of the narrator being described metaphorically as a companion with the moon on the first line.
On the third line, darkness is described as a fellow companion like a friend you have known all these years that you are used to their company...
The last stanza is great since the narrator described themselves as a plant or a tree that dies out in the end.
And in fact, the moon was never lonely. The narrator was never lonely...