My sister has hands like leaves — they don’t change colors in the fall, but her fingers lengthen and thin into icicles, and I often find myself scared that they will break as she works. Her joints stick out like newly carved doorknobs, and she complains about them like an old woman. My hands are rocks. When I plunge them into the soil to pull up weeds, they chip away and I leave behind sand; when I do the washing, my hands erode and bits are thrown out with the dishwater. My hands grow smaller, stubbier, gray.
Our home is a mountain, collapsing into itself over a course of years. The chimney always needs sweeping, the floorboards grow louder each time we walk on them, and the front door doesn’t always want to open. I promise myself when I am older, my mountain will be tall and strong and stony as my hands — the door will not swell with the rain. It will not scratch the floor when we open it.
My mother is a willow swaying under the rough hands of my father. Her long braid thins into silver, a fishbone hanging down her back. It goes this way and that when she walks, like a pendulum. My father’s hands are wolves, bears, the howls and snarls outside the chicken coop late at night — cliffsides. They grip my mother’s shoulders and turn white when she drops a dish.
My father is chopping wood outside. It’s a sliver after sunrise, the air is clean, his ax is gleaming like a tooth. I wonder if I might gleam with that sharpness, the same eagerness as it does when it bites into the firewood. Splinters fall away and I am reminded of my hands washing away with the water — they are stronger than wood, though. I try gleaming, but do not gleam like the ax — more like a wet stone in a creek. My gleam is lost quickly as I dry in the dusty air.
Our winter approaches like a great black horse-drawn carriage, kicking up dust. We wonder, as it comes, if it means death, or taxes, or simply leaves us stifled and coughing, with less food, clothing, and animals.
I am afraid it will trample us. We are on its path and it does not slow, or waver. Its rider’s hands are steady as my father’s when he chops the wood. My sister laughs at that when I tell her, and she pieces together quilts, but her hands are leaves, and do not know how to change color with the season.
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138,443 Literary Works • 672,121 Reviews
Your writing has a practiced rhythm to it that is so distinctly rooted in poetry that it's hard to really take this seriously as a piece of prose. The diction is simultaneously gorgeous, lofty, entrancing, and complex, but it's saturated with metaphor to the point of feeling trivial. All you have here is a snapshot, so blockaded by its own extravagance that it's doomed to remain stagnant. You would do well to peel away some of the poetic exoskeleton (btw this is coming from Faulkner's #1 fan).
Some quick notes, now.
Don't be! Winter isn't a physical object, so it can't trample anyone.
Has it ever, in the history of our planet? No. So why mention it?
Nonsensical, or close to it.
Gawky. Rework this porfa.
If the analogy is meant to illuminate the narrator's sister's inability to adapt (to the seasons?), it would be prudent to remember that during winter, leaves don't actually change color, they just fall off.
These sentences are stranded, floating like messages in bottles somewhere between the present and the future; it's unclear when they occur. Don't abandon your sense of place and time simply for the luxury of aesthetics. Tagging something like "as time passes" or something more specific to the beginning or end goes a long way in keeping the reader involved and oriented.
Knight Dragon, here to review.
The only piece of technical advice I have for this piece:
"my mountain will be tall and strong and stony as my hands", insert an "as" in between "be tall". It reads better and is actually required for the "as" comparison; there's two of them, you know [Dickenson allusion].
Now, with the content, you had a ton of metaphors and analogies and such. That's good, but be careful not to have too much variety. I appreciated how most of them were focused around hands, but even then they still felt abstracted from the unifying object, the hands. I'm not saying they're bad metaphors and such, but that too many distracts from the focus of the piece. So I'd consider removing, or at least solidifying, the non-hand ones, such as the house being compared to a mountain. The winter metaphor was good, actually, because you had the "rider's hands" specifically pointed out, tying it to the hands. So don't get rid of that one. You know, you could keep the mountain analogy if you figured out a way to talk about the "hands of the mountain". I've heard that analogy done before somewhere (but where?), so it's doable.
Hope this helps!
Hey there Persy, you are one of my favourite poets on this site, and I didn't realize you wrote short stories too up until now.
-simileAs far as a review goes, I have a couple of things to say about this. First I shall start with the positives.
You have a way with words, and speaking of such, you are pretty close to have mastered descriptive phrases, creating an image, metaphors and similes, and really giving me both a mental feeling and picture. I feel, after reading your poems, that this story too does reflect your particular style of writing, and I like how I could see that in the first paragraph as I started reading.
However, no matter how beautiful your words are in here, I do feel like there are a few things that bring you down just a bit.
Firstly, I feel like there are far too many similes. It seems like this story was built to play on them, but almost every sentence I am reading like like like again and again. Although it does give some unity to it, I feel as a reader it is repeating itself too often, I feel like you are repeating yourself, and it makes the descriptions tedious after a while and lose their own impact. I think you can find other ways to put the same similes, and I'm not saying turn them into metaphors (because there are already quite a few of those also) but change your wording, imply, rather than tell.
On the subject of that, not everything has to be something, I feel like you could put a bit more action or momentum into the story instead of having it purely similar comparisons.
Next up, I find something interesting in the pattern how you start your paragraphs which is suddenly interrupted.
A first I notice this pattern-
-metaphor
-metaphor
and then suddenly...
-boom, present tense narrative, it really threw me on my first reading, however... I like the paragraph, but it feels out of place especially with how it started, maybe if you put more action like this in it would help unify it. I know that you had present tense action in the previous paragraphs further in, but those ones feel more like reminiscence, or descriptions of what happens during those times, however the father paragraph puts the action in the moment, it really feels like what is happening now and is really broken from the rest of the story.
I got the title after I was about to write how I didn't get it, but maybe you should mention something about the sickle in the story.
Also I am divided on weather you should swap your first and second paragraphs around.
-One one hand, the first paragraph links to the end which is good, but on the other hand I feel like the second paragraph serves as a better introduction than the first, and seems like you are taking a step back by putting it second-- but then again it is ultimately about the sister, or her lack of aid to the family. I don't think you should change, but maybe this is something to ponder, and perhaps make the second paragraph have a more forward momentum feeling rather than feeling like I was zoomed in on a picture then stepped back then zoomed in again.... but then the more I think about it.. the more I like it. Ah yeah divided, just something to ponder.
Overall, I didn't get the story instantly, but once I did it made everything seem so much clearer and pieced together wisely. In the end I loved it.
<3
I re-read your new father paragraph, and I don't like it as much as the old one, but I see how you are trying to get rid of the narrative. I had an idea that maybe you could get back the old paragraph and just change the first sentence which was "my father is copping wood outside." To "My father is a wood chopper." That way you are saying essentially exactly the same thing but instead telling us what he is rather than what he is doing.