pulse

1.
There is a man sitting in the study. His sleeves are rolled up and he has wild hair, white teeth, dark eyes. There is another, standing by the doorway. He is taller; has dark hair, blue eyes. A thousand words and years of longing lie gutted between them. You should have let me go, we could have done so much, I’m not sorry—the silence thrums like a violin string drawn too tight. Look at the light coming through the windowpane. It throws their shadows over the table, the papers strewn over the floor, the dog that looks up at them and wags his tail. There is an ending here somewhere.

2.
The man on the chair tears facts open and puts them back together. It’s what he does. He takes the truth and twists it until it does what he wants it to do. Under his fingers truth smiles, truth is a weapon, truth hurts, truth betrays. He calls it Friendship, when he calls it anything at all.

3.
The man at the door has not smiled in a while. He has a surgeon’s hands, but there are some people he cannot help. Unfortunately for him, he still tries. Oh, how he tries. Not everyone wants to be fixed. The pocketwatch under his hands ticks and tocks the passing minutes, the unravelling seconds. You know this man. You see him every day from behind your window, your mirror, your eyes.

4.
You try, you really do. You roll your eyes when he jumps out of the window and you put some order in his—your rooms, you walk the dog and patch him up when he comes back with his knuckles bruised and his ribs cracked. Under your hands his skin is a map, scars like train tracks and each cut a souvenir. You know bodies the way a watchmaker knows clockwork, but when it comes to him you feel like you’re learning something new every time. His heart beats as steady as the rain that falls against your windows at night.

5.
And it’s three in the morning when you jolt awake. Breathe. There is no one here but you. Ah, but perhaps that is not true. You can still hear the gunshots, the screams, resounding at your ears. Maybe that makes them real. Maybe it does not. The rain pitter-patters at the windowpane and paints dappled shadows over the bedcovers. A violin sings in the dark, the notes rising like a wave to die as foam upon the shore at your door. Close your eyes. Listen. You’re still alive.

6.
Some people are too broken to be fixed. He is not one of them. So you keep on trying, you can’t not try, and he lets you. His smile is a small thing, but you know him. You know the edges of his moods, you know the tripwires woven in his words. This—this you are not sure of. Truth is his, now and always. But you find a piece of it in his smile, pick it up, and do not know what to do with it.

7.
You are—angry, or maybe just tired. Three thirty in the morning and the rain hasn’t stopped, but the violin has. There is a taste of sand at the back of your mouth. Your lips are dry. The man in the mirror has eyes like a desert sky, blue and cracking at the edges. In the silence isolated notes take flight again. They part the shadows. The door beckons. The man in the mirror has a surgeon’s hands and a madman’s smile. Open the door.

8.
There is a man sitting in the study. Wild hair, dark eyes, bright teeth. There is a man at the door. Nothing between them but a strain of music, a sliver of night. This is what it always comes back to: two men and the shadows over the floor. There are stories, you know which ones: you were the one to write them.

9.
Imagine two men standing before you. Say they are brothers, say they are twins: dark hair, dark eyes, bright teeth. One will take you apart, break you open and make you his. The other will sew you back together, make himself the thread and needle, hurt you. One will toy with truth and wound you with it, the other will smile promises and make of truth a lie.
It’s one or the other. You could love either of them. Choose.

10.
Consider that door. Consider the dark wood, the polished knob from which the man with the blue eyes looks back. You could turn that knob, cross the threshold, walk that extra distance to see the man you might love. You could stay here, where the rain illuminates the room. You could keep on loving him. The man with the blue eyes has surgeon’s hands and sand and blood stuck at the back of his throat. You wish you could fix him too.

11.
Also, that was a lie. They’re not brothers, they’re the same man. You knew that. You know him. He has picked you apart a thousand times. He has dragged you down in the depths of crime and injury and you’ve made it all into stories. The manuscripts still lie across the apartment, by your bed or in the sitting room or in the attic. All those silences, those instants of brilliance, of fear—you’ve ground them down to words, paper, ink. This is your story, and his. This cannot be the end. Not now. Not like this. They’re not brothers, they’re the same man. There is a choice to be made, but not the one you think. Now choose.

12.
Listen, you say to the man on the chair. Life for you isn’t life; it’s an experiment that simmers and bubbles under a magnifying glass. And love in all of that is just a stray spark, an unknown factor. It’s the missing gear in the assembly, the one that’s small enough not to make that much of a difference, so you notice because you have to and that’s it. You say to the man with wild hair and fingers that never stop moving, I’m tired. I am tired of waking up at night, of cleaning up your messes, of never knowing how to tell you what I think. I am tired of coming back to your jokes and your smiles which I cannot refuse. And I am tired of dancing around the issue, so here it is: I love you.

13.
Somewhere over your heads, where you cannot see, a bird comes to perch on the chimney. Under the moonlight it preens its feathers back. Then it chirps, very softly. You can not hear it. A cab horse snorts, four streets down, and shakes its tired head amid reins and harness. You can not see it. From a window rises a song, trailing like smoke in the cold air. You are not there. Outside, on the pavement, the stars shimmer from the bottom of a puddle. Inside there is you, the words now free from your mouth, ugly and fragile in the dark. This was a mistake, you know that already. But you’ve made your choice. Look. The world is still standing. The dog wakes up and wags its tail.

14.
And alright, we’ll say it’s your dog. You’ve fed him, played with him; you’ve almost killed him too often to count and I guess that makes him yours, all this—life and all the things within. This is what you do—you take things apart and you stitch them back together, except the pieces are never exactly the way they were before. It could be tragic, but when you smile it’s so easy to forget about it. The dog likes you. And all those things between us—the breaking, the fixing, the smiles, the dog—I guess they make me yours too.

15.
Consider the door. Consider all the choices, all the words. Consider all the years, all the failures, all the successes. Now close your eyes. Breathe. The sand on your tongue has melted to glass, sharp and fragile. The shadows are drifting across the floor. So many things come after this—the apologies, the regrets, the shouts. But that comes later. You are here now. Swallow the glass, swallow it all. Taste the blood. Forget about tomorrow. Forget about what happens next. Cross the room. Kiss him, and tell yourself this is not the end.

16.
Lie, if you must.

_______________________
Alternative title: chiaroscuro.
A writing exercise, of sorts: someone told me to write something in the style of Richard Siken. I did. This piece is strongly inspired by his poem You Are Jeff, which I adore to itty bitty bits.
This could technically be considered fanfiction, but I really think it stands on its own just fine.

Similar to the first one of yours I read, I believe. Which is why I enjoyed it so much. It's going in my favourites.

Certainly, an arresting style. It's confident, it's sharp, it's disjointed - but that's what makes it so unique. We don't beat about the bush with this - every detail counts. An interesting narration, too, in second person - I'm not sure I liked it at the start, but later on, with all the commands and straight-lipped sentences, you had me. I like how you are always willing to experiment with style - it makes each piece of writing a delight to read. An experiment, of sorts (pardon the pun).

Instead of looking at this in a bit-by-bit impression, I'll do it with the full knowledge of what lies ahead. This is because the piece works better as a whole than as a sum of its parts, if that makes sense. There are details you mention at the start which I might have considered highly unecessary, but which become a focal point later on. As if they are the only things we can cling to.

For example, the beginning:

There is a man sitting in the study. His sleeves are rolled up and he has wild hair, white teeth, dark eyes. There is another, standing by the doorway. He is taller; has dark hair, blue eyes.

I'm not a fan of descriptions of appearance for the sake of creating an all-rounded view of the character. If the description isn't necessary, I'd scrap it. Even here, I think that the descriptions are too tightly packed for us to absorb them, for us to actually imagine the characters. All I see from this are two men; one sitting at the desk in the study and the other standing in the doorway. To the first-time reader, the descriptions have already been discarded.

Having read the part later on, where you repeat the descriptions and later go on to say the two men are one and the same, I find it amusing how you used the different descriptions for the same part of the man - he has dark wild hair, white teeth, dark blue eyes; this is what we assemble from the descriptions combined. In a way, the muddled effect that I mentioned just above works to your advantage - makes their appearance more homogeneous already, so it's not such a surprise later. Somehow, I find the white teeth and wild hair ridiculously creepy, while the tall, dark haired, blue-eyed descriptions come across as...a tad cliche. Even if they are true. And I think I understand why the man at the door is taller - firstly because he is standing up, secondly because of some metaphorical connection with that personality of his.

Not the strongest beginning for me, since it starts with something essentially passive: a description. However, it sets the tone and style for the rest of the piece well.

A thousand words and years of longing lie gutted between them. You should have let me go, we could have done so much, I’m not sorry —the silence thrums like a violin string drawn too tight.

A fascinating exercise in multiple personality, yes; however, the above lines, especially the italicised ones, lack the control and strength that is apparent in the rest of the piece. They come across as melodramatic, as if they reveal too much information at once, and also seem uncharacteristic of men in particular.

There is an ending here somewhere.

Wonderful.

2.
The man on the chair tears facts open and puts them back together. It’s what he does. He takes the truth and twists it until it does what he wants it to do. Under his fingers truth smiles, truth is a weapon, truth hurts, truth betrays. He calls it Friendship, when he calls it anything at all.

3.
The man at the door has not smiled in a while. He has a surgeon’s hands, but there are some people he cannot help. Unfortunately for him, he still tries. Oh, how he tries. Not everyone wants to be fixed. The pocketwatch under his hands ticks and tocks the passing minutes, the unravelling seconds. You know this man. You see him every day from behind your window, your mirror, your eyes.

Overall, I enjoyed the way the separate actions were broken up with numbers. It adds a chilling, mechanical feel to them. But in this case, it reads like the notes that you as an author have for the personalities. It seems too neatly summarised, separated, boxed. It lacks any form of reality and ambiguity - surely these multiple personalities must crossover somewhere?

The one about the man on the chair is too direct, almost melodramatic; definitely revealing too much about him. It cuts to the core too quick, too sharply; we have not yet gotten to meet the characters and already you have pretty much revealed their soul. Lines like, 'It's what he does,' 'truth betrays,' 'He calls it Friendship [why is that capitalised?--seems clunky]' seem to shove the moral down our throats too fast. I don't want to be told the theme this fast; I don't want to see their characters this fast.

The one about the surgeon man also borders on the preachy. And the introduction of 'you' is a surprise; I would prefer it if the 'you' was introduced earlier on in the piece. At the moment, we have this fantastic flicking-back-and-forth focus going on between the two men. It's like they're in a bubble of their own. Sticking a third person in there - 'you' - detracts from that focus, that intensity. Now their actions are diffused, somewhat; now we're seeing them through the eyes of someone exact, as opposed to an ominiscient viewpoint. Of course, this 'you' - the woman - is central to the piece, adding the love-'triangle' between them (i.e. between the man's two personalities and her). So, I'd suggest adding her in near the start, to give that effect early on - this will make her included in the bubble effect, as opposed to dancing on the outskirts of it. Later on, she is enmeshed more firmly in the plot, but for now, it seems bitsy.

Actually, I've just read this parts that follow it again. I assumed the 'you' was a woman from the domestic chores (walk the dog, put some order in his rooms), and from when you say 'Choose,' - as if she is choosing between the men. However, I've just realised that the 'you' could very well be the man standing at the door, the surgeon, since you also write, 'you patch him up when he comes back' - something a surgeon would do. But if they're one and the same, who's choosing? And you say, 'You patch him up when he comes back' - if they're the same person, it's like the surgeon is fixing himself. That's bizarrre.

I'm in two minds as to whether I like this ambiguity of the 'you' character. On the one hand, it'd be deliciously cleaner if it were a woman. On the other, it may well be a man battling with his bipolar personalities, thus adding a deranged and confusing ambiguity to the whole story - fitting, in this case. And there is also the part when you say, 'You know this man. You see him every day from behind your window, your mirror, your eyes.' This further serves to add to the fact that perhaps this story is being told from the point of view of the surgeon, the rational man.

Jeez, this is turning out to be a tricky analysis. But the harder, the better. It means I really have to stop and think about things. I like using my brain.

Okay, for the rest of this, I'm going to assume that there's no one but the one man character, and that the story is being told from his surgeon-personality / rational personality and is a back-and-forth description of the one man's two personalities.

And it’s three in the morning when you jolt awake. Breathe. There is no one here but you. Ah, but perhaps that is not true. You can still hear the gunshots, the screams, resounding at your ears. Maybe that makes them real. Maybe it does not. The rain pitter-patters at the windowpane and paints dappled shadows over the bedcovers. A violin sings in the dark, the notes rising like a wave to die as foam upon the shore at your door. Close your eyes. Listen. You’re still alive.

'There is no one here but you' first made me believe it was a woman, with the man gone; but now I think it's just the man. And the 'Ah, but perhaps that is not true' part, alongside the next line about the gunshots and screams (that I first thought were thrown in for the hell of it), make me think that the gunshots etc are the thoughts and dreams of the madman - the man sitting down at the study at the start. The repetition of violin - fine. I had to scan to the beginning to catch the siginificane, though. And the last three lines are great - commanding, mysterious, bizarre.

Three thirty in the morning and the rain hasn’t stopped, but the violin has.

The violin is the internal conflict. Why has it stopped? Who is the man now? I would have thought this insane internal conflict, with the paradox of identity, would have been what drove the story. I did not expect a stop in this so soon.

The man in the mirror has a surgeon’s hands and a madman’s smile.

Fantastique, encore. Mixing up the two - the rational, sane man's personality with the madman's. Honestly, the first time I read this, I thought you were brilliantly in control and also stark raving mad. That's possibly the perfect response, in this case.

Imagine two men standing before you. Say they are brothers, say they are twins: dark hair, dark eyes, bright teeth. One will take you apart, break you open and make you his. The other will sew you back together, make himself the thread and needle, hurt you. One will toy with truth and wound you with it, the other will smile promises and make of truth a lie.
It’s one or the other. You could love either of them. Choose.

This is where I get confused again as to whether it's a man or a woman who's the narrator. The 'you could love either of them' tips me off that it's a woman, but in a strange way, it could quite easily be the man. I don't know whether this elevates your writing or whether it makes it murkier. 'Choose' is great as well, but I wonder why. Why is the man now being asked to choose between the mutliple personality? What is the trigger for the choice? Why can't they both exist simultaneously?

10.
Consider that door. Consider the dark wood, the polished knob from which the man with the blue eyes looks back. You could turn that knob, cross the threshold, walk that extra distance to see the man you might love. You could stay here, where the rain illuminates the room. You could keep on loving him. The man with the blue eyes has surgeon’s hands and sand and blood stuck at the back of his throat. You wish you could fix him too.

11.
Also, that was a lie. They’re not brothers, they’re the same man. You knew that. You know him. He has picked you apart a thousand times. He has dragged you down in the depths of crime and injury and you’ve made it all into stories. The manuscripts still lie across the apartment, by your bed or in the sitting room or in the attic. All those silences, those instants of brilliance, of fear—you’ve ground them down to words, paper, ink. This is your story, and his. This cannot be the end. Not now. Not like this. They’re not brothers, they’re the same man. There is a choice to be made, but not the one you think. Now choose.

I'm swinging back and forth between hypotheses here. Look at it through my eyes - doesn't it seem to you that the 'you' could be a woman or a part of the man? So I take it that one is a surgeon, the other being a writer - mad.

And I detest the use of 'that was a lie.' It's equivalent to 'it was all a dream' - a cop out. You can fiddle around with my perception all you like, you can make me swing back and forth between characters and mess with my head, as long as you do not openly admit you are doing it. Be confident, be assertive. Surely, there's a better way to say it than 'Also, that was a lie'? How about removing it altogether? The next line functions fine without it.

12.
Listen, you say to the man on the chair. Life for you isn’t life; it’s an experiment that simmers and bubbles under a magnifying glass. And love in all of that is just a stray spark, an unknown factor. It’s the missing gear in the assembly, the one that’s small enough not to make that much of a difference, so you notice because you have to and that’s it. You say to the man with wild hair and fingers that never stop moving, I’m tired. I am tired of waking up at night, of cleaning up your messes, of never knowing how to tell you what I think. I am tired of coming back to your jokes and your smiles which I cannot refuse. And I am tired of dancing around the issue, so here it is: I love you.

I do not like italics. I took them out just here to see what they looked like - what do you think? I've seen conversations written with no italics, no quotation marks, just subtle hints from the author. This works okay without them, but I still think it needs some tightening.

And are we getting a bit preachy, again? Of course, all that about the madman analysing love and war and life under a magnifying glass is fascinating from an academic point of view. I kind of do that all the time - overanalyse. But I hate to see something like that so obviously stated in a story. It takes away from the subtlety of it, the ambiguity. Perhaps that was the intention; but again, it lacks control. And the shift from 'you' to 'I' confused me again. Who is talking?

15.
Consider the door. Consider all the choices, all the words. Consider all the years, all the failures, all the successes. Now close your eyes. Breathe. The sand on your tongue has melted to glass, sharp and fragile. The shadows are drifting across the floor. So many things come after this—the apologies, the regrets, the shouts. But that comes later. You are here now. Swallow the glass, swallow it all. Taste the blood. Forget about tomorrow. Forget about what happens next. Cross the room. Kiss him, and tell yourself this is not the end.

16.
Lie, if you must.

Themes and morals are quite passive. They're brought to life with actions, metaphors - for example, the violin, the sleepless nights, the mad dreams. This ending is likewise passive. Too much of moral here - failure, success, apologies, regrets, shouts. The only thing that interested me was the 'Cross the room. Kiss him...Lie if you must.' part.

And yeah, what with all this kissing going on, I again have no idea who's talking. I'm not sure it makes your writing any weaker, actually - perhaps that mystery is just one of the many? But I would like to know . PM me. Thank you for the read.

Hey there Jagged. Comments in red.

Jagged wrote:1.
There is a man sitting in the study. I don't know how I feel about the way this sentence is structured. I think it would be better if it went: "A man sits in the study." There's more urgency if you take out "is". His sleeves are rolled up and he has wild hair, white teeth, dark eyes. I like the way this sentence is snappy. There is another, standing by the doorway. He is taller; has dark hair, blue eyes. A thousand words and years of longing lie gutted between them. You should have let me go, we could have done so much, I’m not sorry This is the first line I dislike in this piece. I think it would work better with full stops, but I'm not sure. The last bit - "I'm not sorry" especially bothers me. It's a little stilted and it ruins the flow of your piece.—the silence thrums like a violin string drawn too tight. Good imagery. Look at the light coming Coming is a very weak verb, and I personally think you should change it. There are tons of other verbs to use in its place, especially since you're referring to light. Normally in other pieces I wouldn't go so far as to criticize a sentence for one word, but this piece is different. The way it flows is more urgent, and it's got a certain vibe so words that don't fit in are more likely to stick out. through the windowpane. It throws their shadows over the table, the papers strewn over the floor, the dog that looks up at them and wags his tail. Normally I'm all for sparse detail, but I'm beginning to think this is a little too quick. The flow is excellent - don't get me wrong there - but the descriptions now feel out of place. When I read this piece I expected an almost minimalist approach, and when I read the description here I realized that I don't remember much about the room anymore. All I remember is the tension. You need to find a way to make the details of the room stick because it's not working as is.There is an ending here somewhere. Again, I'm not sure of how this sentence is phrased. The be verbs tend to slow down sentences, and with your flow and pace you're better off never using them.

2.
The man on the chair tears facts open and puts Again, a weak verb. Pastes, glues, sews, paints - whatever. Don't use puts. It threw me off. them back together. It’s what he does. He takes the truth I'm not sure of the phrase "takes the truth". Partly because I've heard it many times before, and partly because takes is a weak verb again. and twists it until it does what he wants it to do. Under his fingers truth smiles, truth is a weapon Truth is a weapon broke the flow. In fact, the repetition of truth isn't working here, IMO. Your sentence style has been snappy, quick, in this piece, so I expect you to be consistent. Cut words when you can. Pare the sentence down into "...truth smiles, hurts, betrays - it's a weapon." or something similar to that. , truth hurts, truth betrays. He calls it Friendship, when he calls it anything at all.

3.
The man at the door has not smiled in a while. He has a surgeon’s hands, but there are some people he cannot help. The be verbs here are forgivable, but the last part of the second sentence drew me out. There's something about the way it's phrased that doesn't quite fit with the piece. Perhaps shorten cannot to can't?Unfortunately for him, he still tries. The flow of this sentence is way off, even if we don't factor your style in. Rephrase. Oh, how he tries. Not everyone wants to be fixed. So far I have forgiven all the telling, but at the rate you're telling me things I'm beginning to wonder if you're ever going to characterize them without telling me first. I'm also wondering where the story is, because my interest in the tension in the air has disappeared at this point. I need something new to work with. Everything is stagnant. As far as I know there is nothing happening - your characters are not moving. The pocketwatch under Under isn't the word, I think. It's strange here and I can't visualize it. Also, because a pocketwatch exists I will automatically assume this is a period piece and is not set in modern times. his hands ticks and tocks the passing minutes Adding the word away here would be good, I think., [Deleted the to make it flow better] unravelling seconds. You know this man. You see him every day from behind your window, your mirror, your eyes. So you're trying to tell me this guy is me? I'm a little confused right now because you broke the fourth wall by talking to me as a reader, and you broke it without warning. More on this later. Also, I'm a girl, and since you described him as a man I'm having a hard time imagining him and me as the same person.

4.
You try, you really do. You roll your eyes when he jumps out of the window and you put some order in his—your rooms, you walk the dog and patch him up when he comes back with his knuckles bruised and his ribs cracked. Under your hands his skin is a map, scars like train tracks and each cut a souvenir. You know bodies the way a watchmaker knows clockwork, but when it comes to him you feel like you’re learning something new every time. His heart beats [Deleted as] steady as the rain that falls against your windows at night. You completely shifted POV here, and I can't say the transition was very smooth. You moved from third person to second person, and the shift was noticeable and somewhat clunky. You should do it slowly, and in such a way that the reader doesn't notice it happening and only notices once he's far away from the transition.

5.
And it’s three in the morning when you jolt awake. Breathe. There is no one here but you. Ah, but perhaps that is not true. This sentence doesn't fit with the style again. You can still hear the gunshots, the screams, resounding in your ears. Maybe that makes them real. Maybe it does not. With the style you use, contractions will become your best friend. The snappier your sentence the better. So change does not to doesn't. The rain pitter-patters at the windowpane and paints dappled shadows over the bedcovers. A violin sings in the dark, the notes rising like a wave to die as foam upon the shore at your door. I'm not sure about this violin, as I've been taking everything quite literally and maybe I'm looking at it wrong. However, I seriously can't think of anything outside the window that could be a violin, except maybe a siren. Close your eyes. Listen. You’re still alive.

6.
Some people are too broken to be fixed. He is not one of them. So you keep trying, you can’t not try, I think em-dashes would work better than commas here. and he lets you. His smile is a small thing, but you know him. You know the edges of his moods,[Deleted you know]the tripwires woven in his words. This—this you are not sure of. Truth is his, now and always. But you find a piece of it in his smile, pick it up, and do not know what to do with it. This last bit is extremely awkward and clunky as opposed to the rest of your piece. Revise.

7.
You are—angry, or maybe just tired. The em-dash there destroys the flow. Cut it. Three thirty in the morning and the rain hasn’t stopped I'd rather you use positives than negatives. So don't say hasn't stopped, maybe say continues to pour. But then continues is something of a weak verb. Maybe insists on pelting etc? I don't know. Just don't use another negative. If you will, use refuses rather than not *insert verb*., but the violin has. There is a taste of sand at the back of your mouth. Change the structure of the sentence to make it fit with your flow. The taste of sand *insert verb* at the back of your mouth. Don't leave sentences passive. It doesn't work with this style and flow. Your lips are dry. The man in the mirror has eyes like a desert sky, blue and cracking at the edges. In the silence isolated notes take flight again. They part the shadows. The door beckons. The man in the mirror has a surgeon’s hands I like the repetition. and a madman’s smile. Open the door.

8.
There is a man sitting in the study. Again, my opinion stands. Say no to passive sentences. Wild hair, dark eyes, bright teeth. There is a man at the door. Nothing between them but a strain of music, a sliver of night. This is what it always comes back to: two men and the shadows over the floor. There are stories, you know which ones: you were the one writing them.

9.
Imagine two men standing before you. Say they are brothers, say they are twins: dark hair, dark eyes, bright teeth. One will take you apart, break you open and make you his. The other will sew you back together, make himself the thread and needle, hurt you. One will toy with truth and wound you with it, the other will smile promises and make of truth a lie.
It’s one or the other. You could love either of them. Choose.

10.
Consider that door. Consider the dark wood, the polished knob from which the man with the blue eyes looks back. You could turn that knob, cross the threshold, walk that extra distance to see the man you might love. You could stay here, where the rain illuminates the room. You could keep on loving him. The man with the blue eyes has surgeon’s hands and sand and blood stuck at the back of his throat. You wish you could fix him too.

11.
Also, that was a lie. Destroys flow. Rephrase. Especially the "also" part. It completely shatters the flow. They’re not brothers; they’re the same man. You knew that. You know him. I'm against the use of italics and I don't really see a need for the italicization so take it out? He has picked you apart a thousand times. He has dragged you down into the depths of crime and injury and you’ve made it all into stories. Made is a weak verb. Use another. The manuscripts still lie across the apartment, by your bed or in the sitting room or in the attic. Two ors in a sentence stilt its flow. Revise this sentence, Jagged. All those silences, those instants Part of me insists it's instances, but a small voice tells me instants would work too. oO of brilliance, of fear—you’ve ground them down to words, paper, ink. This is your story, and his. This cannot be the end. Not now. Not like this. They’re not brothers, they’re the same man. There is a choice to be made, but not the one you think. Now choose.

12.
Listen, you say to the man on the chair. Life for you isn’t life; it’s an experiment that simmers and bubbles under a magnifying glass. And love in all of that is just a stray spark, an unknown factor. It’s the missing gear in the assembly, the one that’s small enough not to make that much of a difference, so you notice because you have to and that’s it. Very, very stilted. No matter what period it's set in, it's extremely stilted. I cannot imagine a person saying that. Revise it. You say to the man with wild hair and fingers that never stop moving, I’m tired. I am tired of waking up at night, of cleaning up your messes, of never knowing how to tell you what I think. I am tired of coming back to your jokes and your smiles which I cannot refuse. This part is awkward. Rephrase or revise. Also, informal conversation tends to use contractions so that might help your stilted dialog problem. And I am tired of dancing around the issue, so here it is: I love you.

13.
Somewhere over your heads, where you cannot see, a bird comes to perch on the chimney. The way you shift from one scene to another is too sudden. I'd like to see some warning beforehand. Under the moonlight it preens its feathers back. Then it chirps, very softly. You cannot hear it. Cannot works here. A cab horse snorts, four streets down, and shakes its tired head amid reins and harness. You cannot see it. From a window rises a song, trailing like smoke in the cold air. You are not there. Outside, on the pavement, the stars shimmer from the bottom of a puddle. Inside there is you, the words now free from your mouth, ugly and fragile in the dark. This was a mistake, you know that already. But you’ve made your choice. Look. The world is still standing. I think shortening it to "the world still stands" would be better.The dog wakes up and wags its tail.

14.
And alright, we’ll say it’s your dog. You’ve fed him, played with him; you’ve almost killed him too often to count and I guess that makes him yours, all this—life and all the things within. This is what you do—you take things apart and you stitch them back together, except the pieces are never exactly the way they were before. It could be tragic, but when you smile it’s so easy to forget about it. The dog likes you. And all those things between us—the breaking, the fixing, the smiles, the dog—I guess they make me yours too. Okay, but why is this italicized? oO

15.
Consider the door. Consider all the choices, all the words. Consider all the years, the failures, the successes. I deleted two alls to make the sentence flow better. Now close your eyes. Breathe. The sand on your tongue has melted to glass, sharp and fragile. The shadows are drifting across the floor. So many things come after this—the apologies, the regrets, the shouts. But that comes later. You are here now. Swallow the glass, swallow it all. Taste the blood. Forget about tomorrow. Forget about what happens next. Cross the room. Kiss him, and tell yourself this is not the end.

16.
Lie, if you must.

_______________________
Alternative title: chiaroscuro.
A writing exercise, of sorts: someone told me to write something in the style of Richard Siken. I did. This piece is strongly inspired by his poem You Are Jeff, which I adore to itty bitty bits.
This could technically be considered fanfiction, but I really think it stands on its own just fine.

Final comments:

This is certainly something new. It's a story, but it's in the second person point of view. Those sorts of stories are rare, and I applaud you for daring to try it. However, this isn't perfect.

In the beginning you switch from third person to second person, and there was no warning whatsoever. And somewhere down there you switched back to third person, and then you kept switching until I wasn't sure if I was a separate being from the man who tried to fix everything or not. I was quite confused in the middle, because at first I thought I was the guy who tried to fix everything, but later on you asked me to choose, and I wasn't sure who I was anymore. Be clear. I want to know who I am in the story. Am I the one given a choice? Am I someone similar to the man who tried to fix things? Or are we the same being?

Clarity is essential, and this piece simply lacked it in some parts.

I like the style, the pace and the general flow of the piece. However, it's not consistent. Sometimes your word choices are perfect, but when it wavers it becomes painfully obvious. Because your style relies on its minimalism and its sparse use of words, you need to be careful about what words you use. Every single one counts. Also, your style is snappy so you cannot afford to have passive sentences unless they're absolutely essential. Your passive sentences must be cremated and buried six feet under. You cannot afford to have weak verbs in this piece (granted, all pieces shouldn't have weak verbs, but it's more important in this piece than it is in others). Word repetition is only done when needed. I cut a few words in the piece, mostly because they destroyed the flow.

Your beginning was good, but later on it sagged. My attention wandered and I actually commented on it. Later on the conflict revealed itself again, but if this were a story I was reading for fun then I would have left before then. I would have put it aside and I never would have finished the story. No matter how fascinating your style, plot wins out in the end. There was so much telling in the next two paragraphs that I was getting sleepy and restless. You didn't give me much to go on except the fact that they were tense. There was something wrong - you mentioned that once, fleetingly, then you moved on to describe them and their characteristics, their traits, etc. It became stagnant as your characters did not do anything - they simply existed. That was it.

You need to work on your transitions because they're incredibly stiff. Your dialog also needs improvement. It's stilted and I can't imagine someone saying it.

This piece was weird, somewhat. Sometimes it was in my face, shoveling ideas down my throat, and other times it was so vague I had no idea what it was babbling about but I went along anyway because the use of language was unique. Of course, there were times it made perfect sense and I loved it, but we still can't have those vague and overly-obvious bits in there. Work on clarifying it. Maybe it's a niche piece, and maybe it'll appeal only to some people, but it's not working for me.

You have a tendency to suddenly introduce things without any warning. Work on foreshadowing and dropping hints ahead of time so the reader isn't blindsided.

The descriptions you introduced were beautiful, but they were quick, like the rest of the piece. The only ones that stuck were the ones mentioned in the paragraph of the things "I" cannot see/hear. Since they didn't stick, I'd consider cutting them out altogether. Anyway, the focus of this piece is not the description, nor the setting. (Unless I understood it wrong?)

Technically there is a plot, but at the same time there isn't. (Well, I think I just showed how confused I was by that one sentence. >>")

Anyway, I hope this review helped. (It probably didn't, given how utterly lost I am. oo") PM me if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Kara

This is Watson meditating on Holmes, isn't it?

In any case, this is fantastic. The little moments of revelation and thought and action all broken up the way they are lends this sense of shattered glass to the narrative. They're so sharp and clear and vicious. No angst, just understanding and the understanding bites.

The only thing that confused me was the title: I really didn't see how it fit in with the rest of the story. What was the connection you were going for there?

...

Not much else to say, other than frothing praise. The long reviews before me make me feel rather inadequate, but I understood this piece right off the bat. It flowed so well for me and I saw little to no grammatical mistakes, so I have nothing to critique.

Marvelous, marvelous work.

~GryphonFledgling

So, I keep coming back to this. This story is irresistible - it has this magnetic intellectual pull for me. This time, I had a read of Richard Siken's 'You are Jeff.'

I'm in love with it.

And I understand the style a lot better now, after seeing what exactly you were trying to mimic. That's exactly it, isn't it - a sort of sharp focus, without knowing who the narrator is - this infuriating ambiguity is what drives the piece on so that it's a wonderful jumble. And you've pulled it off remarkably well - I see many parallels with 'You are Jeff' here, but since it's done so cleverly, it works, rather than sounding like a hackneyed amalgamation of the original piece.

Anyway, just wanted to drop by and say that I get it now - or rather, I know that I am not supposed to get it. And you should have the link to 'You are Jeff' bigger, since it's such an awesome story/poem.

I don't have much to add, given that your piece was so good and you've had several other great reviewers, but I just had to say something. Navita linked me here and she was right; this is an awesome piece.

I do love how the words and the sections just flowed from one to another. It was a bit confusing, but it drew me in well enough that I didn't start questioning all that went on there. I do have to say that I totally got the Holmes/Watson vibe, but that's just because I'm obsessed with the new movie. Also kind of interesting was the Inner Editor/Muse vibe that I got from the piece. Before all of the action started coming in, I thought that it was about the Inner Editor and the Muse, because there was the talk of the papers and tearing things apart and twisting things.

The one thing that really caught my eye during my first read through was this:

You are—angry, or maybe just tired.

The hyphen really doesn't fit and there are other ways of adding emphasis, but this one is just too abrupt. Especially after you relent angry back to just tired.


I do agree with the previous reviewer in part about this sentence:

Also, that was a lie.

But, I really think that it is just the 'Also' that breaks the flow.

And that's all I can say about this, except for I loved the ending. I loved paragraph 13 and of course 16. And it's all just so wonderfully put together.

- Tatra

First of all, I liked it because it was unique. It's interesting how it is under romantic short stories but it feels so dark. At the same time, it doesn't. It's just different which is why I like it and that's the best thing about this story. I like how the number divide it. I like how you described the man a few times through the story.
It is a little bit confusing. I feel a little frustrated because, to be honest, I'm not sure what is going on. Who is this man? I read it twice but maybe it's just me? Maybe I did not pay enough attention? Then again, maybe that is your point, for us to be confused and nothing to be clear.
Overall this is an interesting and good piece of writing. I would not change much. I like how it ends with one line. Maybe it is just me but I kind of wish it was not as dark. Again, it could just be me. Keep writing! You have such talent

Kara: Thank you for the great review! You've made several great points, and I'll definitely keep them in mind when I go back over it. Passive is probably one of my main problems: it comes so easily, and it's a habit that's hard to break.
Second person is a bit weird, I realize. In this case, I'm not trying to say the man is you, the reader; rather, it's more him adressing himself, or viewing himself in a certain way... it's a bit hard to explain, to be honest. I do know some people absolutely hate it. A case of YMMV, I guess?
The violin isn't coming from outside, but from the other room: they crash against the door, not the window.

Navita: There are only two people here: the man in the chair and the man at the door. The "you" is the man at the door - the doctor, the one with the nightmares. I tried to show a disconnection in the parts in third person: in a way, he starts off as though he was an outside observer, as you said, but then he finds himself a part of the scene, and that's when things get complicated, at least emotionally-wise. The double-personality aspect never really occured to me, or at least no further than the surgeon/madman contrast, which was more a rapport between function and emotion.
I'm so glad you liked 'You Are Jeff'. Siken is one of my favorite poets ever, and spreading the love always makes me happy =D I'm happy you get it too, though you've made some comments I will also take into account when I revise this some more. This one was actually written before deus ex, even if it was posted later: it was my first foray into this style, and I kind of fell (further) in love with it. Thank you.

Gryphon: Haha, absolutely, this was written with the Holmes/Watson dynamics in mind, thus the 'technically fanfiction' note on my part. I'm happy to see it showed even if it wasn't explicit. The title was a reference to the "His heart beats as steady as the rain that falls against your windows at night" line as well as as trying to convey that sentiment of closeness, of life, of the heart. I'm uncertain about it, certainly. The alternate "chiaroscuro", which I considered, is the name of a painting technique that focuses on the contrast of light and shadows, but it lacked the physicality, the closeness of "pulse". I don't know. Titling this one is hard. I'm glad you liked it!

Tatra: Again, yes on the Holmes/Watson. I may possibly (only possibly) be ridiculously obsessed with that movie as well. Though the Inner Editor/Muse aspect is incredibly interesting. I'm getting ideas now.
I'm glad you liked it, and thanks for picking up on those!

AutumnSun: Thank you! I was torn between putting this under Romantic and in General fiction, to be honest. But in the end I figured this was about love, in the end, so under Romantic it went.