Young Writers Society

This is a very mysterious piece.
It borders on prose poetry and short story, so other and general suit it well for categorizing.

Well, I really like this. It's very mysterious and open-ended, and the reader feels inclined to continue reading to find out who this person is. I wonder if the warped description is from a child, as the narration sounds very confused and simple.

Is this an animal? Possibly an abused one? The reader is really left wondering that. There's no need to specify, as this is what keeps the reader thinking. I really like how you were confident in seeing that the description was clear enough to not blatantly say what the person or thing was, or what was exactly going on.

If I had to guess personally, I'd say it was an abused animal. Someone died and could no longer take care of the animal, who was taken in by a little girl and her mother. I could keep guessing throughout this entire review but I won't.

Anyways, great job! I feel very connected with this narrator and the vagueness is not unsettling, but simply makes me wonder. I really liked how you formed this to be specific, but at the same time, keep the reader guessing.

Keep writing!

Hmm. I'm puzzling and puzzling but I can't figure out what the speaker is supposed to be. They have a black scar, blemishes, are always watching a wall -- its vision is obscured with black paint.

At first I thought the speaker was in a hospital, but unable to speak or respond, only watch as people came to visit him. Now I wonder what kind of object sees and is only in front of a wall? ;_; This is basically almost the only thing about the poem that bothers me, and I know you can't TELL me the answer, because you can't be with EVERY reader when they read the poem and get confused... wah. haha.

So I went up and looked at the title, and it says it's a mirror, but what mirror watches the wall? Is it an inside mirror? If so, does that mean people came in and tagged the house after it was abandoned? My sense of the setting of the poem has now changed like three times, so I'm wondering if you can't slip in just a few more details about the setting. I like that you avoided it because you wanted to be subtle and the mirror would focus on the details of the people, but I think it would help just to get us grounded!

Okay. So I loved the first three stanzas. I loved especially the first, with all the description of the humanity of the man down to his teeth, his scars, his muscles. I liked seeing the woman that closely, too: the freckles on her neck.

But I was a little disappointed then, to see the poem take a predictable turn: age, after this generation comes another, and things remain after all the people. Have you read poems or stories like this before? I'm asking because I know I have -- many poems or stories with this same plot progression. Is there some other direction you could take the ending of this poem?

Hope my thoughts and feelings were useful to you!

If you have any questions or comments, please PM me or reply to this review.

Good luck and keep writing!

Hey there!
Budding writer here to review!

Ok let me tell you point by point:

1) Even though the concept is fine the title was too obvious. I can tell that what your trying to do here is to narrate it through the eyes of the mirror and thats okay but it would have been better if the title was not so obvious and you had revealed the fact that it was written though the viewpoint of a mirror. Or even better you could have let the readers figure it out on their own. That way you could have kept it interesting.

2) The size of what you wrote somehow felt short to me. Specially considering the category under which you classified it "narrative". As the writer you can make it as long as you want but with special reference to the subject I felt it was too short.

3) It somehow lacked variety. You could have made it really interesting and using the concept of a mirror you could have played it up alot.

On the good side:

I liked how you were referring to the blue wall as being a constant companion. Cause specially when its a mirror the best way to show the age was to focus more on "show" rather than "tell".

Keep writing!

-Budding writer