After a long while of coming up with potential ideas for my drafty-draft poem, I ultimately decided to look at my interests for inspiration, specifically books and television shows. Having recently watched a show with a lot of symbolism and a relationship between two characters that stood out to me, I found myself inspired to write a poem about this relationship, as it is similar to a dynamic I’ve been trying to work on in one of my personal projects, and I love the tragic arc that parallels the positive one of the main characters. At first, I tried to focus on the (supposed) ending of this relationship, which takes place on Christmas Eve and results in the death of one of the two characters. I contrasted the emotions and setting of their ending with that of the beginning of their storyline— Christmas Eve and a warm spring day. I also mentioned the night sky in one of the stanzas, as the two characters are associated with dark and light respectively. As I wrote my first draft, I felt something was missing, as I hadn’t added a title, and the poem was initially very short. Two days later, I decided to add parentheses around the phrases addressing the dead person in the relationship, as I felt it showcased the hidden vulnerability of the speaker. Overall, I didn’t struggle with crafting the poem, save for length, as I have a habit of writing more narratively.
Bookmaking Reflection
When decorating my book, I wanted to primarily focus on the symbolism in the dynamic of light and dark. In the show, there’s a scene in one of the end credits involving two betta fish. I looked this up out of curiosity. If you put two male betta fish together, they will fight until they destroy each other, and possibly themselves in the possible. I thought this image and the context of the betta fish exemplified the tragic nature of their dynamic, so I chose to draw two betta fish on the cover, one white and healthy, the other black and damaged. Inside the book, I included a yin-yang drawing, as it again displays the light-dark dynamic, but also the necessity for the opposing forces. My poem makes mention of Christmas, so I included a drawing of a Christmas tree but left it without ornaments in hopes of illustrating the numbness that now surrounds the holiday for the speaker. I also drew polaroids with various dates to illustrate the passing of time and the memories contained within it. On the back cover, I used sticky notes to make a separation between the drawing of a grave and the coffin beneath it. The grave symbolizes the death of the speaker’s lost love, while the coffin has a heart on it, as in the poem’s final draft, there is the line “I miss you, the one who holds my heart.”