For You Who Will Never Read It

Written for someone who never cared enough to take the time.

 

That place.

In the place where I used to fear being,

where I used to mourn and ponder until pure exhaustion and isolation,

it was never morning but always dusk in shades of silent gray.

This is where you left me,

a half-hearted hope for your return.

Here,

where my patience was planted to grow confidence and maturity.

Here, in your absence.

When you appeared again, I didn't need assistance anymore but a partnership -

that which you provided more vibrantly and happily than my furthest imagination.

The day was dawning again with love on the horizon,

painting my sky a brilliant array of promises,

framing scenes of the future.

Up the slope you lead me, taking my hand once again.

We both climbed to watch the sunrise that greeted us as we reached the top.

But here,

you slowly yet progressively moved closer to the edge.

Little did I know, you were preparing for a fall. Little did I know,

it was only for yourself.

I had never realized color could be so toxic,

eating at the heart in broad daylight.

So at the very edge, I pushed you...

only because it's what you desired in the end.

I couldn't watch you fall this time, knowing it was your decision.

So it became mine, a sentiment to the downward spiral of our breakdown.

But still, off the edge you carelessly flew.

I hope you can realize that flying isn't forever;

eventually you'll fall and crash again.

And me, left in this place

where love has died at the hands of lust and lies

and ignorance.

This place that I'll walk away from - to heal into the light of a different day,

one that you'll never see.

And to our place, I will never return.

Reviews

[cloister]

I have a few thoughts. First, take some time to double-check your grammar. Not because your grammar is bad, but because everybody makes weird little errors either from typing too fast or from editing part of a sentence but forgetting to change other words in the sentence to match: those times when past tense verbs should have lost their -ed endings, or a description should change from adverb to adjective. Little things like that. They're minor, but you should make the effort to find and fix them because they reflect on the work as a whole. Readers are a cynical lot--probably from having been subjected to too-much actually bad writing--so when they see fiddly little errors it's all too easy for them to dismiss the whole work: "If she can't even get that right, why should I keep reading?" That's bluntly put, but I know a lot of readers feel that way.

Still, that's easy stuff to fix.

More broadly: I thought the first paragraph of this was really good. Easily the best paragraph of the whole piece. It does a nice job of establishing a concept, building it up through evocative phrases and imagery, and then ending with a great punch-line ending that sums the whole thing up. It's a lovely portrait of an emotional state, and is something not many writers can do well at all.

That said, i also felt throughout the piece that you were trying just a little too hard to pack every line with overtly poetic imagery and clever turns of phrase. It's nice--good, even--to have those here and there but when a piece is so densely composed of them it slows down the narrative. The thing is, poetic allusions are work to read. They are typically very metaphorical and rarely literal. Every one of them takes work on the reader's part to unravel. What does she mean by "where my patience was planted to grow structures of ... et cetera"? It's not that these metaphors and images are, in isolation, difficult to figure out. They're not. But each one is like a little speed-bump the reader has to go over in order to progress through the piece.

If we push the metaphor of streets and speed bumps, we can say that a well written piece is a smooth road. It is straight and fast in places, curved and slower in others. Sometimes it branches to an off-ramp before coming back to the thoroughfare. But whatever its quality, the reader can move smoothly along it. But once in a while, when the writer really needs to draw the reader's attention to something or give particular emphasis to a moment, an idea, an event, there's a speed bump in the road. Not a crassly deposited line of lumpy asphalt, but an elegant, well-crafted departure from the otherwise smooth expanse of pavement. The reader has to slow down to navigate over, around, or through it, before resuming the headlong journey through the rest of the story. In that moment, the metaphor or other evocative, poetic turn of phrase can have great power by virture of its ability to momentarily arrest the reader.

But when the whole road is nothing but speed-bumps, well, you can see how they would lose their charm. That's what I mean when I say that they slow the story down.

Let your story flow. Let it be a road trip on open highway, not a rush-hour battle through stop-and-go traffic. Be clever and poetic when you need to--when it serves the story--but understand both the benefit and the cost of doing so.

Anyway. I hope you don't take that as overly critical. I don't mean it to be. I think you do have a flair, an innate knack with words, that will serve you well. Keep writing.

[Ama May Cooper]

Amazing. To lose someone you love.. i dont quite understasnd what actually occured but i can sense a feeling of deep loss and almost anger despite the soft visionary piece used.
Keepy writing you are a wonderful weather of words