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@emma-starr

Very beautiful! I love the idea of using a moonflower to describe true beauty! It’s really lovely.

It’s not quite there yet, but I’m struggling to decipher what I don’t like about it. I liked it more as we came to the end (starting stanza 4) than in the beginning. A few things to play around with:

Maybe your analogy is too obvious? You tell me right from the beginning that you are comparing a girl to a moonflower, and you tell me what people think of her. I wonder if you can be more subtle. I think the beauty of the other section is that I had the chance to dissect and find meaning in the description. You don’t tell me what any of that means, but I know what that beauty represents. Perhaps start it something like:  “I see her in the daylight / the moonflower /

And flow directly into:

Her leaves and tiny tendrils search, probing,
Pursuing the light above.
Her vines cling to the guiding trellis,
As she makes her way up the rough wall.
Why is she among the cherished beauties?

Then for the 3rd stanza, instead of telling me that few know her, just let that be assumed. Come to your second part with something like: We watch her in the day and scoff / We don’t understand her purpose / but when I dare to come at midnight I see her / …
Peering through the playful shadows at dusk,
And through the shroud of twilight,
[I] discover

Does that make any sense? I think more eluding and less telling would help. Try it out, and see if you like it (using your own words, of course!).

Another thing to try would be messing with the length of the lines and seeing if you can make them all a bit more consistent. It’s okay to have some variation (obviously. It’s freestyle) but smoothing it out might help it flow better in the readers’ mind.

Let me know if any of this helped! I can’t wait to see your poetry on Story Embers!