I like it, but as you asked, I'd change the name to, "My Lovely Mother," its simpler and more easily remembered and it adds a great tremendous feeling to the last words of your poem.
It reads like it was a personal experience and if it was you have all my sympathies, I am intimately familiar with what that feels like. If it's not you've done a great job of describing it. You show a good command of language with descriptive phrases like, "The stench of miscellaneous medications..." and "...a parade of memories..."
I think your opening line detracts from your thought, or maybe your intent, of the poem. "...looking at the grand necklace..." does not make me want to find out "Why." Changing it to something like;
"I stood there, looking at my mothers necklace.
It was my favorite, it’s jewels sparkle like stars.
She gave it to me for my prom, it had been hers when she was my age."
makes me want to find out more about why she's looking at it and who her mother was or is. But, these are only suggestions and MY words, it is YOUR poem.
You shift tense too with phrasing like, "...hand on my shoulder felt like a welcome friend. I spin around..." you've gone from past to present tense and that's confusing to readers.
Also it should not be all one big paragraph. Break it into lines with whatever meter you decide. If needed change the wording to make it work that way, there are over 225,000 words in The Oxford English Dictionary so there are many ways to phrase any given thought.
Overall I think it's very good and it evokes emotions and memories in me from my 75 years of past. I'm a beginner too and I'm working hard at learning this craft so people will Want to read my words and recommend them to others.
Thank you for sharing your words with us. "Keep On Truckin" and never stop writing.
I like that story. The words build a good picture of a guy with some deep social and psychological problems then the steps he goes through to eliminate the "Sound" of the fly instead of the fly. Finally he opens the "never opened window" and lets it out to only have it come back. It left me wondering if he'll get up out of his Funk and let it back in because it was company of a sort. It gave him something besides his deep dark existence to think about.
You use a lot of glue words and tell us what's happening instead of showing. In the 2nd paragraph you say "one day,as I was sitting in my room, I heard ..." In the 1st paragraph you'd already set up the room and sitting in the chair so if you write it as "I heard a buzzing one day and found the source to be a fly sitting high up in one corner." The word confused is a Glue Word and does little. Trust the reader to know that because he took the time to find the source they will understand he's confused. It becomes a showing, an action, rather than a tell.
Very good scene for a larger piece about how, or even if he tries, to fix his problems. Maybe make the fly a friend and have him talk to it; figuring out he has problems then working through them. Maybe he heals just before the fly dies, they don't live long. That could be a very powerful scene.
Of course these are my ideas and it is "Your" story. Enter a bunch of contests, the challenges of doing it and the responses I get have helped me improve my story telling tremendously. It's all about the story and how deeply you can drag your readers into it with your words.
Thank you for posting that story. I enjoyed both characters and wish I could have known them. I was swept into your story and identified strongly with her husband. He's the kind of man I try hard to be. I walked my wife of 45 years down that same path, but, unlike him, I came back alone.
The tension and emotions are kept at a high level through the entire piece and I could feel them groping at my insides and pulling me farther in. The way you used her reactions to his care painted clear pictures of them both in my mind.
The only thing that caught my attention was when you say, "... watched as the geese taught the young ones ..." and to me "... the mature geese taught the young ones ..." reads more easily because they're all geese, just different ages. I did see the sentence above stating "... the geese ..." and "... their seven teenaged goslings ..." but I've never thought of them that way. Just different I guess, but it did make me stop and think about it.
Thank you again for that wonderfully poignant story.
I think the story is good. It's a good story line and the fact it's a young girl pulls attention.
There's a lot more "telling" than "showing" and I think that hurts your story. Lines like, "No, I tried to yell out, but nothing came out. My throat was to weak and scratchy." The double use of "out" pulls me out of the story. Also you could rewrite that to have her at the center of action. Have her make a sound that shows your readers she can't talk because her throat is to dry and raw. "Scratchy. Is way to weak a word.
You maintained the tension and fear well, but at one point you say, "... the door coming closer into view." and 3 paragraphs later say, "... I could see the door, in sight, ten feet in front of me." That yanked me out of the story. "Just coming into view" means she could see it.
The twist at the end got me. It plucked my heart string because I don't like to see children hurt, but it's a good story line. Read, study and rewrite it.
That was very well done, an enjoyable read. In 300 words you created their world, their external goals with a big piece of his inner one, and gave a good sense of character for both.
My only question is the use of the word "Parset." If it's a made up word explained in a larger story, great, but it closely resembles the word "Pasec" which is used to measure astronomical distances and is approximately 3.25 light years across. It's mildly confusing to us engineer geeks who think in the minutiae of facts.
Another great little story. I love the twist at the end. I am a pancake and Real maple syrup freak so that got my attention, but the end got to me. Having 6 kids, 3 of them daughters, I could feel the bottom drop out of Mindy's life. I traveled the world for years designing computers for anyone who would pay me and worried about what would happen to my kids (youngest is 43 now) if anything happened to me.
I hope to be able to put words together like that some day.
That was very good. It hits close to my heart and I've thought very similar thoughts after losing my wife of 45 years. You wove an incredible amount of love into 300 words.
The only changes I'd offer are personal word choices, but it's your story, not mine.
Thank you for those words and the memories they envoke.
That really got to me. I feel as though everything inside me went through a butter churn or a mincer. I loved your words and the way you used them read like he was telling me the story, and i was asking questions he answered. I think that's how it should be.
I went through everything in the story but the nursing home when my wife of 45 years died after 2 years of dementia eating her mind then her body. If I ever encounter god, which I do NOT believe in I'll kill it for putting her through what I watched. Slowly like it did her.
I was strong enough to keep her at home and she died after a long session of me telling her about a life she couldn't remember and we went to sleep. I woke minutes after she died and I didn't get to say goodbye. That eats at me. She had a dog too, a Jack Russel that she fed in our bed which I hated. I regret not being better about that now. I found a good family with kids that love the dog because I couldn't keep her.
There are no negative comments, just a couple words and phrases I'd have done differently. I'm hoping I can learn the craft well enough to write gut wrenches like this.
Thank you for sharing that with me and everyone else.
I like that. One of the wonderous things to do in my world is lay in the dark desert on moonless nights and stare up into that infinity and contemplate how absolutely insignificant I truly am.
Thinking things like, "Every atom in my body and the earth it lies on and in every star in the 14.5 billion year expanse of the universe are all the same age, 14.5 billion years." There's a humbling thought.
I enjoyed that story. It engaged me and pulled me in far enough for the end twist to hit quite hard. That would be a good hook for the first paragraph of a longer story.
A couple things distracted me a little. The word "Awe" at the end seemed out of place. Fear, absolutely, but Awe doesn't seem to fit. It removes a great deal of the shock.
Also the "She had missed a call." is really not necessary; we know she missed the call. Besides, it's 5 more words you could have used elsewhere.
Overall I really liked it. Thank you for sharing it with us.
Hi,
I believe in the precept of your story and the existence of parallel universes. I think new ones are created each time we make a decision so there are uncountable parallels.
I particularly like the way you created a meeting point for the two to overlap and show her having escaped and her not having escaped and we the reader are not sure which reality is real. I think many of us live there periodically and are seeing both as distinct real paths before the choice is made to follow one.
That was very well done. For a short time my reality suspended and I was able to share both of their experiences. I feel very happy for the woman who escaped and stronger sorrow for the one who didn't. A problem with believing inparallels like that is that after the split one of them still has to suffer.
I did not see anything to criticize, all I can do is laud your work.
Thank you for sharing that with us.
A question though; Did the escapee slip into the others reality or was it the other way round?
First I have to admit I read your piece because of your name, I'm Paul Gordon, both my parents are immigrant Scotts.
I enjoyed the piece, it made me want to know more about Jessica. My 37 year old grand daughter is named Jessica and she lives in Glasgow right now. It caught my attention even more.
Your main character is female and if her husband is dead she's a Widow, a Widower is a guy whose wife died. I'm a widower.
Your first line needs to be more powerful, it "Tells" and it really should show. Something like: Turning up her thick, fake fur collar did little to stop the knife like cut of the arctic blast, but this was something she had to do every year on this day. "Winters were our favorite times and the antique store on this day was our favorite," she thought, "I miss you so much, Paul." Make it more personal, give her more to pull the reader in. You need to make them cry for her.
Also don't tell us the music was Piped in, show us like: Glen Millers Sunrise Serenade brought feelings of loss that made her closed eyes wet swaying to it, dancing to a memory of arms no longer there as the music filled her soul.
"May I have this dance?" Is perfect, I love it.
This is a good start and could be built into a very good story about her. She obviously lost someone she loved and is still stumbling along trying to get past that loss. I have an intimate connection to the pain she feels, my wife of 43 years died 2 years ago. You get better at handling that loss over time if you work at it, but the memories never stop. I still wake hearing her voice some times, it's devastating and you should show that, but make it about recovery. I like positive endings.
Thank you for writing this, I appreciate the memories it evoked in me.
I carry an iPad all the time and whenever I'm still for long enough to get it up and my word precessor or Scrivener open I write. It may only be a few minutes, but sometimes it's an hour or more. Doctors office, restaurant, coffee shops, street benches, parks, essentially anywhere I can watch people or nature. I collect characters and scenes for stories, sometimes I just watch because people crack me up. I spend a lot of time on my porch watching the world pass by when it's warm, days into night at times.
One of my favorite times was A summer rain, clouds sweeping over dropping rain until a patch opened for sun, letting it show the diamond like sparkles before the first new drops started their 'Crater-Creation' on the surface of puddles again. It shifted between sun and rain eight times over two hours.
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