Two voices share this short poem, one exhausted and one hungry, and the drama lies in the handover between them. «i want», by bubbletaetae_, opens with fatigue ("I'm tired of being the moon") and ends with a demand ("I want to be the sun"). In between, the speaker describes what life as the moon feels like and then names its opposite. The poem is about wanting to change one's whole nature, not just one's circumstances.
The portrait of the moon is built from three fragments, each a different kind of complaint. "Perpetually dark" is about invisibility. "Cratered" is about damage, a surface marked by old impacts. "Cursedly stuck" is about having no say in any of it. The adverb "cursedly" is the oddest choice. It suggests that someone or something put the speaker in this position, so the moon is a victim as well as a sufferer. The sound of the lines backs this up. Hard k sounds knock through "dark," "cratered," "cursedly" and "stuck," so the stanza feels clipped and bruised. "Perpetually" is a long, formal word that slows the line down and makes the endlessness it describes felt.
The choice of the moon is also quietly clever. The moon makes no light of its own. What we call moonlight is the sun's, bounced back, and the moon also keeps the same face turned toward Earth. The poem never says this, but the imagery invites a reading in which "dark" and "stuck" describe a life that only shines when someone else's light happens to fall on it. If so, the final wish is more than a wish for brightness. The speaker wants to be a source and not a mirror.
The turn comes at the dash after "light," where the poem swings from complaint to desire. "I want to be light - / I want to be whole" is built on parallel phrasing, and the repeated "I want" makes the wish sound like a rising chant. "Whole" has a nice echo with "hole," and the moon has just been defined by its craters. Whether or not it was intended, the word lands against that image, as if wholeness would mean the damage no longer counted. The moon is also only fully round for a night or so each cycle, so "whole" is a state the moon visits and cannot keep.
The most intriguing line is "This time around." It stands alone, and it is the only place where the poem hints at repetition: a previous attempt, a previous life, or simply the moon's endless cycle of phases. The poem does not say which, and that openness is part of its appeal. The phrase is casual and almost conversational, a small breath before the last line. It also changes the grammar of the poem. The opening speaks of "being" the moon, an ongoing state, but the ending uses the infinitive "to be," which looks forward. The speaker has moved from describing a condition to choosing a direction.
Formally, the poem is free verse with no rhyme. Its lines stretch and shrink according to feeling. The first line is long and plain, the middle ones shrink to single words, and the ending recovers some length, which mirrors the move from being worn down to standing up. The progression of wishes escalates carefully, from "light" to "whole" to "the sun." The definite article in the last line matters. The speaker does not want to be *a* sun but *the* sun, the one everything else depends on. The closing word, "sun," is a single plain syllable, and it lands like a decision.
Nothing needs to be known about the writer to see why the poem works. The title is in lowercase, which gives it a quiet, almost whispered tone, while the body asserts itself with a capital "I." That small difference suggests a speaker gathering confidence as the lines go on. The poem is significant because it takes one of the oldest pairings in poetry, moon and sun, and uses it for an everyday admission: I am tired of feeling like this, and I want more. It does not say whether the sun is a hopeful goal or a risky one, since the sun is also blinding and far away. That uncertainty makes the ending feel honest.