Download the Moonlit Stars. Poetry

CONFESSIONAL POETRY

When summer came,
we unplugged beneath a moonlit sky,
lit like a million fireflies,
our souls creased like crumpled paper
and purple ink,
filling each other with memories.

I still remember there were nights
we would download the mustard moon
and stitch embroidered stars,
though there came a time
it would split my heart in two
when I remembered
the morning bleeding like tears unleashed
and there was nothing I could do,
but simply not forget
when the chasm and the crimson sky
would hide behind
collected stars,
and tangled clouds exhumed the truth
as we nearly broke apart
like shattered glass,
sutured, bandaged pointed fingers,
forever gashed, searching for some tape or glue,
held together
with jagged memories
of crumpled paper
and tapered moon.

© Connie Song 2025. All Rights Reserved.

Grace notes: Confessional poetry can be, among other things, intimate, brutally honest, painful, emotive. This piece was inspired or should I say triggered by some memories of the times he called me outside to view the stars on the clearest nights of our summer vacations in the mountains upstate, unobstructed by skyscrapers and wires. If only I could download and recycle those warm embraces beneath those moonlit stars and delete all the broken moments.

Expanding my horizons, in my literary research, I learned the school of “confessional poetry” was associated with poets who redefined American poetry in the 1950s and 1960s, including Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, John Berryman, Anne Sexton, and W. D. Snodgrass. (Sources Wikipedia and Poetry Foundation.)