Alicia Tan, a 12th grade poet, crafted a “love letter from the moon to the sun,” Alicia said.

This work juxtaposes the anxieties and insecurities held by the sun and the moon. This was inspired by “Shakespearean sonnets for the rhyming scheme and poets such as Lord Byron for syllable stress,” the poet said.

A Lachrymose Lunar Lament

By Alicia Tan

Tell me something I’ll remember, and I’ll recite it in a flash, 

Words whipping wistfully through my lips til’ the skies fade and subdue. 

Give me a time so distant, and I’ll shed tears as memories clash. 

My darling, my sun, I make you this promise: I’ll always see you. 

Seldom do the words come easy, yet still I brood here and confess, 

I cannot withstand the gray as the craters of my heart grow old– 

The terribly violent quakes of my soul echoing distress. 

That’s why I hope you’ll reach me, fingers dipped in your rich shades of gold. 

Do your warm eyes feast upon the way my bleeding heart breaks in half,

Ripping at the seams for all my worshipful watchers to perceive?

It makes my lungs shaky, and my systems hold the cold, undying wrath

Of cosmic storms passing through my galaxy, starry as the eve.

Listen to the way our lives and my waves crash and ache and bellow. 

Far, far away, the moon’s destitute desperately waves hello.