How to Live with Her

You see her at dinner the night before. Drugged and crazy, her eyes meet with yours for a millisecond. Giant, watery-blue orbs above heavy, heavy, purple bags. Wildly bloodshot. Threatening. Dangerous.



You know that to contend with her would be impossible. Let it slip. Just play with the Spaghetti O’s. Oops! One slipped off your spoon . . . dropped plop on the floor. It seemed so loud only because it’s so quiet right now. Just breathing. Inhale. Exhale. Pick up the pasta. Hmm . . . try to break it in half. It slipped again! Go on in such a manner until she slides away from the table, silently, eerily, and collapses on the sofa with a desperate, obnoxious grunt.



Finally you can leave. Scoop the untouched, half-cooked canned dinner into the snow outside. You like to watch the snow melt; you think it’s a brighter horizon.



Walk into your room. Trip on carpet fray, as always. Pull out elastics, along with hair. Ouch! French braids hurt--that’s one thing a hairdresser mother with nothing better to do with her time is good at. This much, you appreciate, in a kind of helpless sort of way. Now kick off slippers with the gaping holes at both big toes. Rub eyes with fists. Flop in bed. Sleep.



Dawn comes like a scared pigeon, just rushes over you and next thing you know, you’ve got a bird in your face and some white, sticky stuff on your c . . . c-c . . .c-c-c-cold fleece jacket.



I’m getting ready for school now, Mom. Can you hear me? You’re usually up all night when you’re like that. I mean, off and on. You know what I mean. Hold on, you’re still on the couch?


Run to school before she can greet you.

Is this suppose to be a poem? Like I don't understand it. Can you help me understand it, Abbi.? Like what does it mean? Well, I hope you can tell me.

--Jessie, your besttt franddddd=]

This story isn't in poetry because it doesn't have the right format. It's about living with a drugged mother, and, one day, waking up to see her lying on the couch. I want to emphasize the fact that this story is completely fictional.

Hey Abigail! I'll just make some quick suggestions, for such a short piece. ^_^

First of all, this was extremely well written! I'd like to congratulate you on that before anything else. I enjoyed what I read. However! There's always room for improvement.

Format, nit-picks, and everything else!

I think your format was a little bit confused. It wasn't a poem, of course, and I suppose it qualifies as a short story, but it seems to fit best as 'flash fiction', which is little more than a quick excerpt. You also have thrown in kind of a guide-for-dummies atmosphere, which is great! But you need to either make that more distinct, or water it down a bit. For example, anti-pop's Your Doppelgänger and You is a how-to guide regarding a person's inner demons. I understand that hers is meant to be funny and yours definitely isn't, but see how she formatted it so that the readers could tell immediately it was supposed to resemble a guidebook? I think you could benefit from something like that.

You know that to contend with her would be impossible. Let it slip. Just play with the Spaghetti O’s. Oops . . . one slipped off your spoon . . . dropped PLOP on the floor. It seemed so loud only because it’s so quiet right now. Just breathing. Inhale. Exhale. Pick up the pasta. Hmm . . . try to break it in half. It slipped again! Go on in such a manner until she slides away from the table, silently, eerily, and collapses on the sofa with a desperate, obnoxious grunt.

Two things: ellipses (AKA dot dot dot, or ...) are great, but only when used effectively. I think you could manage to cut some of these out in this paragraph for some other punctuation marks. Also, the PLOP in all-caps? That would be even better if you put it into italics instead.

Finally you can leave. Scoop the untouched, half-cooked canned dinner into the snow outside. You like to watch the snow melt; you think it’s a brighter horizon.

Walk into your room.

I don't understand why she's scoop the Spaghetti-O's into the snow outside, and then go to her room (which is presume is inside?). It doesn't make sense when she could just shove the food down the drain, or in the trashcan, because it seems like going outside might attract her mom's attention, which she doesn't want.

Pull out elastics, along with hair. Ouch! French braids hurt--that’s one thing she’s good at.

I'd love to see this expanded, this bit about the French braids. How does your MC feel about having a mother who doesn't bother enough to make a better dinner than a half-uncooked cans pasta, but she does bother to sit down at braid your hair (which is a rather complicated progress, actually, and time-consuming)? Expand about whether or not it's uncomfortable or awkward, sitting as her mom braids her hair. Does she get angry? Sad? This is a great passage into emotion-- use it!

So, overall, very nicely done. I just think you need to either go for that completely detached and informative feel (like in the example I gave you) or lean more towards a traditional first-person narrative, with emotion and thoughts. Just keep in mind that with second-person, you can't tell us how we feel. But you can show us what happens, and, if you do it right, we'll feel the emotion anyway!

PM me for anything, if this didn't make enough sense! xD

~Evi