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.
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125,029 Literary Works • 672,781 Reviews
Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),
Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!!
Anyway let's get right to it,
Well this is a powerful little start here. Its such a combination of this very simple and childlike act and what seems like some very genuine fear and some rather powerful tension. It implies this person's hiding from a parent perhaps that's not exactly stable and it just creates this powerful and rather uncomfortable atmosphere that works wonders at getting our attention.
You're really doing a wonderful job keeping up that ever so slightly uncomfortable energy simmering at the surface even as we go through what seems like a fairly mundane and rather typical routine there. It adds an entirely new dimension to things I think and make this whole thing so much powerful, especially because we're never really told any reason for why any of these things are this uncomfortable.
Okayy well that one sort of confirms there at last I think but even here I love that it is still somewhat ambiguous until you really go ahead and try to connect things fully with the title. All in all it makes for a rather powerful read here for something so simple. You capture the sort of energy you're aiming for really well I think.
Aaaaand that's it for this one.
As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.
Stay Safe
Harry
Hey Abigail! I'll just make some quick suggestions, for such a short piece. ^_^
I enjoyed what I read. However! There's always room for improvement.
Format, nit-picks, and everything else!
First of all, this was extremely well written! I'd like to congratulate you on that before anything 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.
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.
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.
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!
PM me for anything, if this didn't make enough sense! xD
~Evi
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.
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=]