Tin Can Telephones

This has been sitting around for quite some time. It is a piece that I feel has benefited from walking away from coming back to a couple of times. Your comments will determine if you agree.

"Do you think that we will end up together when this is all over? You know, after we are dead? I mean, our souls? Maybe when a person dies their soul ends up with the soul of the person they wanted to be with in life. I don't know what you think, but at least one of those would mean that our souls would end up together. At least from my point of view. We obviously don't always end up with who we want to in life, now do we?

"Maybe if we end up with the one we wanted to be with...well, that could get complicated. The person you wanted to be with might not have wanted to be with you, and what would happen to your souls then? It must be who you were meant to be with then. Yes, it must be.

"Maybe there is a tie somehow, something that binds together souls that belong to each other. Like that bit of elastic string that loops together cheap shoes at a mega-store. Like transcendental tin can telephones.

"Surely souls that belong together are joined by more than bits of string. Those are the first things that come to mind when thinking of souls forever bound? Flimsy elastic and sweatshop shoes? Not something gold, something ethereal and unbreakable, until not even death do you part? Not something eternal and forever, too beautiful to be described? That is how I see it, if something that cannot be seen could be seen.

"Til death do you part. I never really understood that. If the reason for marriage is partly to prove something to some sort of higher being and to protect us in the afterlife then why would death put a stop to a union? If there is such a thing as Heaven then would we not belong together there just as we belonged together here on Earth?

"Perhaps there is a distinction between true love and the love that brings about a marriage then. Our Creator realizes this distinction and releases us upon death from any bond formed in life that was not founded on a true love. Souls that genuinely belong together can join forever in the eternal, no matter if they were united in life or not.

"There. I can rest easy. We have nothing to worry about. We will surely find each other when the end comes. I have no doubt that even though we had our difficulties here all of that will be forgotten in our endless bliss. Our final union will bring such joy that it will surpass all that came before.

"I hope I have convinced you. I really don't know how you could see it any other way, really.

"My love, you are so quiet. And oh dear, so very cold."

Author's Note

Constructive criticism welcomed. Is the end effective?

Reviews

[JC]

interesting! caught me off guard at the end! Mrs Poe!

[inconsistentsea]

Thank you so much for the feedback. I can't believe all of the mistakes I had in there! It is not so much a conversation in that there is only one person speaking. Perhaps it is a type of monologue. I think the new quotation marks work.

Thanks again!

[Satori]

I love where you are going with this piece, but it doesn't work for me as is. It reads almost like a prose or journal piece than a story. You need to put the conversation pieces into quotation marks so the reader knows it is supposed to be a conversation taking place and not a stream of consciousness piece.

The ending was brilliant, but didn't gel immediately because I thought I was reading a stream of consciousness and wasn't clear that the narrator was talking to an actual person and not just pontificating to him/herself.

Couple of grammar edits. You have a double typed "they they" in the second line. I'd get rid of the "But" in the beginning of the second paragraph. Third paragraph down you use bond when it should have been binds. Take the "I think out" out of the last sentence in the fourth paragraph.

Other than that I love the subject matter and how you wove the story into a surprise ending. You kept a great tone throughout the piece and you have a clear voice.