she would
if her torso weren’t hollow, if her body didn’t hang languidly so that gravity ceased to have meaning and she could not create the tension to push herself up from the earth, if she weren’t limp and loose and floating in a sea of pain, pain, pain, no sharpness, no point where knife met flesh, just a dead, dull ache at the core of her, inextricably tangled in veins and follicles so that there was nothing to fight with or against, no barrier between herself and what she was.
7 comments:
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Gabriella Bertrand on January 29, 2012 at 7:43 PM said...
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I truly love this piece. I wondered if this piece was from the point of view form someone who is dead longing for life, or if it was a description of a inner struggle between one's body and one's soul. Very interesting piece.
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Alyssa Patterson on January 29, 2012 at 10:40 PM said...
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I like how the title is actually part of the piece (as in, the beginning of the sentence) but it did take me a few reads to actually put that together (but I am kind of slow). This seems like a rather abstract description relating to identity that is beautifully worded, but not specific. I'm curious as to what exactly the speaker is going through/has gone through and I think there is more you could explore with this.
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Joseph Legaux Jr. on January 30, 2012 at 11:24 AM said...
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This flash piece really takes the reader’s attention. In some ways the reader feels bogged down by the situation of the story. What takes place here is a snapshot of what repetition does to a story. The impact of having “pain” serves as a reminder to the reader what type of experience they are experiencing. By being ushered into the tension the reader themselves experiences some of that suffering, making it a macabre transcendent experience.
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Erin Elizabeth on January 30, 2012 at 8:04 PM said...
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I read this twice to make sure I wasn't missing what it was she was missing out on because of her hollowness and found there was none. Or at least none explicitly stated, and I liked it. Haunting and pretty.
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Chacha Murdick on January 30, 2012 at 8:32 PM said...
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You tease! You begin a sentence that meanders and meanders and makes you think it's going to be a complete thought, but then it fails to satisfy the promise of "if" (offering us only a "would" as answer). I think that's what cool about this. You are playing at the sentence level and torturing readers with their own expectations of where the sentence is supposed to go.
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Simon Cross on January 31, 2012 at 9:16 PM said...
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I agree with Chacha definitely a tease, but in a good way. You let the reader decide what she would do. Very haunting.
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c on February 6, 2012 at 12:30 PM said...
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This begins as if it is a conditional statement (If..., then...) but does not deliver with the second part of the equation (and is therefore a fragment) which may be why this feels unfinished and unresolved. The piece evolves into an extended description of the pain in which she is floating; continue with this, return to the conditional "if she..." to determine/discover what it would mean ("then she...").
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