Young Writers Society

I’d like to shake it all off of my weak shoulders like white December flakes. I know I said I’d follow you into the bleakest night. I know that you walked alone down that cold, desolate hall. For your loneliness in that dark house, I apologize. The truth is that I imagine that you now lie on the foundations of the Parthenon, teasing the gods with your songbird lips. I close my eyes—I pretend that we can sit together for a fleeting moment and reminisce our days on the shores of eternity, like how we held the sands of time in our hands and tossed them into the roiling tide, and how we’d lie back in vacant fields and cast our life together in the cirrus molds.

I think of you dancing on emerald tides each time I peer into your photographed eyes. And I wonder each night if you can still feel those tiny white dots inside you. And that makes me wonder if you felt anything at all that starless night, and if you thought of me while you waited to fall asleep.

It burns, and I have to stop myself before I begin wondering if I could follow you down that hall after all...and dance on shifting tides, and sit on the marble steps. It all seems so wonderful that it’s nearly impossible to resist, and that’s what scares me the most.

I wonder these days if your breath still lingers in this house. No one dares to come close now. The wind blows outside and the walls creak and I hear the tiny medicine bottles rattling in the cupboard like rattlesnakes that are searching for me, searching for a writhing half-corpse to ensnare and drag to that smoldering crag.

Most nights, I just linger alone on those sickly-white tiles, staring into the mirror that watched you vanish. There are times that I see you bathing behind the ethereal fog on the glass, and there are moments that I feel those cold fingers of yours on my cheek. As I stand there, I dream of you lying in the cellar beneath the house as worms slither through your flesh. In those moments, I can hear you breathing, moaning out for help like the phantom siren you've become.

Suspened somewhere between poetry and prose . . . some of the loveliest writing can be found in this particular netherworld, and this piece is no exception. Your language is positively beautiful. A bit on the purple side at times, but beautiful nonetheless. If I were to go through the work and point out every great sentence or phrase, I'd basically be quoting 90% of the piece.

I am somewhat hesitant to get nitpicky with this, as I interpret it as being essentially an enhanced stream-of-consciousness, in which case the piece is intended more for you than for anyone else. And I must admit, cohesion and flow are not topics I critique often. However, I will do the best I can. . . .

I’d like to shake it all off of my weak shoulders like white December flakes. I know I said I’d follow you into the bleakest night. I know that you walked alone down that cold, desolate hall. Anaphora--nice! And for the singularity of your dying ember, I apologize. I don't quite understand the purpose of the word "singularity" here. The truth is that I imagine that you now lay on the foundations of the Parthenon, teasing the gods with your songbird lips. The repetition of "that" slightly disrupts the flow. "The truth is, I imagine that . . ." might sound better. And I close my eyes and pretend that I can sit with you for just a tiny bit (This is just an opinion, but the term "a tiny bit" seems a little informal and out of place here.) and reminisce our days on the shores of eternity: how we held the sands of time in our hands and tossed them into the roiling tide, and when (For the sake of parallelism, "when" should probably be "how") we’d lay back in vacant fields and cast our life together in the cirrus molds.

Do the pillars of the gates shake when the current in the Styxx runs rampant? I don't know why, but I absolutely love that sentence! I think of you dancing on the viridian tides each time my lips touch glass. And I wonder each night if you can still feel those tiny white dots in your core. And that makes me wonder if you felt anything at all that Tuesday night, and if you thought of me while you waited to fall asleep. I would omit the "Tuesday" here, it just doesn't fit.

The image of you shivering on the linoleum floor stirs me to hate myself for being so happy that night while you took all the icy sting that the world had to offer. It hurts, really, (The word "really" could go.) and I have to stop myself before I begin wondering if I could follow you down that hall after all...and dance on the river, and sit on the marble steps. It all seems so wonderful that it’s nearly impossible to resist, and that’s what scares me the most.

I wonder these days if your breath still lingers in this house. No one dares to come close now. The wind will blow outside and the walls will creak and I can hear the bottles rattling in the cupboard like rattlesnakes that are searching for me, searching for a writhing half-corpse to ensnare and drag to that celestial courtroom. Awesome sentence!

Most nights, I just dawdle alone in the bathroom, staring at the mirror. I don't really like the word "dawdle" here. Once again, it sounds too casual for the tone of the piece. There are nights that I see you, vaguely, in the foggy hand print on the glass. The palm is smeared across and the fingers are pulled taut like nooses upon the platform's release. It is artwork. Often, as I stand there, I dream of you basking in the musky caverns beneath the house as maggots and worms slither through your flesh. Gross, but nice. In those moments, I can hear you breathing, moaning out for help like the meandering siren you've become. I think you could find a better, more graceful word than "meandering" for this otherwise lovely sentence.

Looking back on it, that was more of me griping about particular words than giving advice on cohesion, but I assure you it was well meant. You're an incredible wordsmith; keep up the good work!

~Warrior Princess

I agree with Warrior Princess, except that she thought of a lot more to say about it than I did!

The only things I have to say is that the flow seems not to work for some reason between the second and third paragraphs.

Also, the word Tuesday, while I don't think the idea should just be 'ommitted', bear in mind that it's out of place because the Greeks probably didn't use the word Tuedsay. Find out what they did use and put that in instead. ^^

Overall, very, very well done. I really liked this piece. I thought it conveyed a beautiful mixture of love and yearning and regret and guilt and sorrow.

Very nearly perfect!

Hope this helps. Definitely keep writing!

Lumi ♥

I love your first line. I like the way it flows, the little alliterations that come in pairs and carry the momentum of the sentence over, and how it sets the snow/white--dark/night contrast with the line that comes after, and how the cold is still there in that third sentence: parallels and perpendiculars neatly tied together. But then that fourth sentence comes and breaks it a little. A bit because of the flow, because it's hard to fit 'singularity' in a sentence without it weighing the whole down, but it's also--what singularity is it? Why would you apologize for it? (and I do get why there would be apologizing; but why for this specific reason?) I think this'd work just as well with just "I apologize". Starting what comes after with "The truth is" is also a bit sudden. The rest of that stanzagraph is good, with the longing, the closeness. Only nitpick is the "when we'd lay back", which I think would flow better with a "how" instead the "when".

The change of tone/mood in the second part from mellow to more brusque is a leeeetle bit fast too, but it works well enough, because you make no mystery of it; jump straight into water from sky, violent but still graceful. And how you fade, from the "waters running rampant" to the softness, the loss of sensation--it's very fragile in the contrast. Like stained glass.

And then the third section bites, albeit in a muted way--not anger, just this obscure temptation. The way you end this part is a bit flat, though, because there hasn't really been any mention of fear before, and so this being what scares you the most comes out of nowhere.

And then you transition back to the wondering, reinforcing that shift you'd made from Elysium to the 'real' world, happy to bleak, and the way you've made it so smooth is delightful. (although if that "writhing half-corpse is you", it's again too abrupt when you really haven't shown much of yourself to be wrong on a physical level)

I heart the last paragraph; again with that distance, the increasingly morbid imagery--how you've pretty much set a slow fall through the whole piece, Elysium to linoleum to underground, how even the nearly happy tone of it has now become a call for help.

I love this short-short story (and I think that's really what it is--there's not really a plot, but things happen) and I love your writing style. I'm a huge fan of using beautiful language in short stories. Your dying ember, your songbird lips, cirrus molds, etc; but I also like how you interspersed it with really strong imagery: Do the pillars of the gates shake when the current in the Styxx runs rampant? I wonder these days if your breath still lingers in this house...It's all really beautiful writing, but I don't think you need me telling you that.

Amidst all this gorgeous prose, though, there were a few things that jumped out at me as being decidedly not-quite-as-good. Your first line could be so much better, and I know you'll be able to find something stronger. I think it's the simile; it's not as strong as it could be, and I think there's a better simile or metaphor out there--plus, you can't really shake off snow, and as much as that's one of those technical details that creative types hate to pay attention to, you don't want to distract your reader as they try to puzzle out how, exactly, they'd shake snow clinging to the cloth of their jacket, maybe already melting with their body heat, from their shoulders. :) I'm not sure what "for the singularity of your dying ember" means, which is okay because it's still strong language, but you have to be careful that you don't lose people with your complex vocabulary. Sometimes--not always, but sometimes--it's okay to say something simply.

All right, and then love-love-love...we get to "The image of you shivering on the linoleum floor stirs me to hate myself for being so happy that night while you took all the icy sting that the world had to offer." Okay, does this sentence seem a little long to you? Especially for such powerful imagery--shivering on the linoleum floor? That's good, really good, and it leads us to all sorts of mental questions, like, um, why she was on the floor and not a chair. So that's good stuff, but we start to lose it as we wade through the rest of the sentence. A comma, even, might suffice: you could put it in between happy and that, so we have a bit of a pause before we get to the next strong image. (Though I have faith in you. I think you can rewrite the last bit of the sentence, maybe even make it into a second sentence.) I also think "stir" is a weak word in this situation. It sounds like it'd be more of a punch to the stomach. Can you make the image have more of an effect on the narrator? And you don't need to say "It hurts, really." Take out the 'really'. It does not belong in your beautiful, tight-knit prose. (I don't think the ellipsis does either, but that's more of a stylistic choice.) I also think "wonderful" is a bad word, especially in such a strong sentence, and when you follow it with "that's what scares me the most", which is really powerful, it looks even weaker.

I love the next paragraph. The next-next paragraph, I'm not sure if you really want to describe the hand-print, or say "it is artwork." I think you could transition from "there are nights I see you..." to "Often, as I stand there," and take out everything in between, but you can play around with that. And I agree with one of the other reviews: I know you can find a better word than meandering, something that makes a stronger last impression--it's your last sentence! Hit them with all you've got!--and makes more sense.

Okay, in terms of "cohesiveness and flow." It flowed very well, in that it didn't have a structure, and we weren't sure where it was going to go next, but it fit in very well with the narrator's state of mind. I think you might want to give more of a hint as to what happened to Ivy Rose. Obviously, if you say it outright it will hurt the piece, but all we really know is that she's dead, and the narrator blames herself, and was happy the night she overdosed, or got hit by the car, or killed herself, or was murdered. Maybe just one more paragraph, or a few sentence, or even a sentence, that gave us a hint to something: maybe not necessarily how she died, but maybe why the narrator was so happy that night? That's my main question right now; I can come up with my own scenarios as to why Ivy Rose is basking in musky caverns, but I can't for the life of me come up with a reason as to why the narrator was happy.

I loved the idea of intermixing ancient Greek ideas with modern-day people. If you ever want to play around with that, you could probably add some more Greek influences, but it's very, very good the way it is. This is great--I'm so pleased that I stumbled on it.

Thank you for sharing!

Lookin' extra ginger today, Lumi.

I'm here to review this after you begged me because I'm so awesome asked me to do so. By the looks of it though, you've gotten a couple of good reviews, especially by Jagged and Kaitlin. Therefore, my review will most likely seem suckish, but hey, what can you do? Plus, there's just something about you that I can't take seriously...

Due to my lack of brain cells, I will admit that I had to read this thing more than once to be able to grasp a few things. I just thought I'd let you know that. Now that I do believe I understand it, I shall continue. I actually very much enjoyed this, Lumi. It's so... pretty. It really is. I adore the words you've used, the sentences you've put together and just the general flow of the story. So to answer your quesiton about the flow of this, I think that it was great.

One thing I'd like ot mention though is that when it comes to technicality on writing, I know sod all really. Because of that, I may be missing something when it comes to the flow, but I didn't notice anything sticking out to me, so that's a good sign, I suppose. Bearing that in mind though, I may not have spotted something that others may have when it comes to the flow. As for the cohesion, that all seemed good to me too, if I'm honest. God, I know nothing about technicality...

The only thing that really bothered me about this is rather pathetic really. When I said that I found the flow great, although that is true, there was something that interrupted it a little. Most of your grammar was good, but at some points, it was a little iffy. Because of that, it did interrupt the flow a little. Like I said, you were okay most of the time, but I did see the odd area where a comma would have looked dandy.

And I close my eyes and pretend that I can sit with you for just a tiny bit and reminisce our days on the shores of eternity: how we held the sands of time in our hands and tossed them into the roiling tide, and when we’d lay back in vacant fields and cast our life together in the cirrus molds.

This is the first sentence that stood out for me. It's awfully long, isn't it? The sentences before it were wonderful, length wise, if a little short. I just found this part a little overwhelming after reading a few short(ish) sentences before it. There's also quite a big number of the word and in the first part too. Okay, there's only three, but the way you've set it out makes it feel heavy with andness.

Looking back, I suppose there are a few things in this that disrupt the flow a bit. Things like what I've written above, for example. You know, long sentences, awkward words and repetition of some words. Little things like that. I'll tell you what works a treat actually... Read this aloud. It's amazing how well that actually works. If you read the piece aloud, you'll be able to hear where the wording and the flow sounds dodgy. Then all you have to do is give the sentence a bit of an edit, and yipee, Bob's your uncle. It's all good.

I know I said that the grammar(ish) side of things was the only issue I had, but what can I say? I lied. The only other thing that bothered me a little is about the content, I suppose. I am aware that it's partly due to my lack of brain cells, but I do think that some parts of this aren't as clear as they maybe could be. Like Kaitlin said, I don't want you revealing things completely because that would ruin the whole thing. I would like for you to maybe make some more hints though. I agree that I'd like to know more about the bird who died. Unless I'm missing something, you haven't told us how she died, for example.

Now, I obviously don't want you to just tell us or anything, but I would appreciate it if you did reveal a bit more. Even though you're almost as much as a creeper as Bolt, you're one darn good writer. Taking that into account, I know that you can make the history behind Ivy Rose a bit clearer, but at the same time, without giving everything away. Just add in the odd hint here and there, eventually allowing us readers to put the pieces together and figure things out.

Keep writing,

xoxo Skins

Thanks for all of the reviews, guys! I'm still tweaking this, but what was updated as of January 1st is what was submitted to the YWS LJ. That was right after Skins' review, so if you guys want to take another scan over it, enjoy. It still needs much work, and the ending is much looser than I'd prefer. If any future reviewers have suggestions, that'd be wonderful~

Lumi! Hi!

Thanks much for the request. It was a real pleasure reading this. Have you ever heard the song "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" by Celine Dion or watched the music video? This story reminded me of the song a lot. I don't know if it's just me though. As Jagged pointed out, the first line is just wonderful. You build up so much feeling and emotion in such a small amount of words, and your atmosphere is absolutely wonderful. While this a flash and you're supposed to be brief and vague, I still feel like you can flesh this out a little bit.

Right now, we don't get a real sense of time or setting. This piece takes place largely in the mind, but yet...it doesn't. It feels like there should be a concrete location, or at least something to set it off. Even if it means your narrator looking out of the window and thinking of this girl. It would also be nice to know both what happened to the girl and how long after this story is supposed to be take place. Is she dead? Did she leave him? Did it happen recently or a long time ago? If you specify, you'll be able to tighten the layer of sadness that we see in this piece.

Also, I would like to see more expansion on the ending. Right now, it sort of just ends, right as you build up these thoughts that the narrator may be crazy and is seeing the ghost of his dead lover. I want to know more about it. While this is the kind of piece that doesn't really feel like the type to have concrete resolution, I would like to see more expansion, even if it simply means telling us that the narrator is never going to get over this girl.

I hope this helps -- I really did have a pleasure reading this! Best of luck submitting to the journal. Send me a message if anything is unclear or if you have further questions. ^^

~ Elinor