By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
"Shoot The Moon" stages a relationship built on mutual disbelief and petty damage, ending with the speaker admitting that he has never recovered his former self.
The poem is stripped down to accusation, denial, and a few blunt objects, which makes the emotional damage feel primitive and irreversible. "Stones tossed / No knives" suggests that the wound did not require grand violence to last. The closing turn is especially bitter because it concedes not only change, but permanent diminishment.
Shoot The Moon: neither of us thought the other was true. Captured with the unbelievable. Stones tossed, no knives. Cheating as I once was. I have never been the same.