The Last Kiss Found Poem

This found poem is created from the words of the story “The Last Kiss” by Ralph Fletcher. It is done digitally using Canva, and the words selected were being put into a collage style. The black background portrayed the main character’s melancholy when he knew he had lost his father’s good-night kisses. I inserted three pictures in the found poem: the heart, the broken heart, and a family picture. The family photo by no means displays the main character’s family. The heart represents the exposition bit of the story, the mundane good-night kisses he gets. It is a loving and cozy moment for his family; therefore, I used a heart symbol to interpret. The broken heart symbol demonstrates the rising action, climax, and falling action of the story. From his dad refuses to kiss him no matter how many times he tried, to acknowledging that he is too old to be kissed and had lost his father’s good-night kisses forever, and when he began thinking about whether he will someday lose his mother’s good-night kisses as well. All of the rigid truths he has to accept, and the “no more kisses,” “you are too old,” and “will you not kiss me also someday?” They made his heart into a broken heart, which is why I picked the broken heart to embed in my found poem background.

In the story “The Last Kiss,” the main character has an ordinary daily life from brushing teeth day and night to the bus to school and back home. One of his everyday affairs at night is to get kisses from his mother and father. I succinctly showed the exposition of the story at the beginning of the found poem. Where the words “symmetry,” “morning and night,” and “kisses from my parents” appeared.

Nevertheless, all of sudden, one day, the main character’s conventional night routine got different. He went to find his father for the good-night kisses as usual, but for that night, that time, he did not kiss him. All he said was, “Well, good night, then.” The main character was dazed and, at the same time, perplexed. I explicated his emotion in the found poem with “I was stunned” to point out its potent effect on his father shunning to kiss him and develop and amplify the conflict.

I assume the story’s rising action is the several awkward tries of him attempting to get a good-night kiss from his father. I noted the rising action and the tension-building in various rising actions in the found poem by using the phrases, “Next night,” “again,” “more nights,” and “more awkward tries.”

The climax in my found poem and the story is when the harsh truth finally sunk in: The main character was too old to be kissed by his father. In the found poem, I exaggerated and made it more like the climax by separating the three phrases, “I was too old,” “to be kissed,” “by my father.” It resembles that every phrase of the harsh truth immersed more profound into the main character’s heart.

The conflict in the story is the main character VS. time. As time passed, and as the main character grew older and older, he could not possibly get kissed by his father because there always seems to be a detachment between the child and the parents when they get older.

I suppose there is another conflict in the story – Character VS. Society. Modern society thinks that the relationship between the children when they grow up and their parents must have some privacy and space. The main character’s dad is not deliberately shunning the main character’s good-night kisses, but it is the way the preponderance of parents do when their children grow older, and it is the way society taught the main character’s dad to do. However, if the main character’s dad and the main character could go against the typical society convention, he perhaps would still get his good-night kisses.