Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),
Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!!
First Impression: Well this was a bit of a story and a half here. For something as short as this, it manages to pack such a punch to it, and it felt like there were so many meanings to it intertwined among the sort of central meaning that seems to run through the whole piece.
Anyway let's get right to it,
He was always there; and never quite. Burning flowers in a fragile vase, turn to the white walls and gasp at the vacuum. The room was his soul, mirrored in each stroke of white, in each dab of cream-colored paint on dry walls. Painting his blood on his dry skin. Pale skin, blue veins firing like cylinders. He was here; yes, stuck in the moment. Waiting for time and space to collide - bring down the fragile walls he had erected over twenty years. Twenty years of sweating over stones, stumbling through the ruins of whatever he called his life. Picking the perfect stones, erecting his perfect life. . .
Waiting for the tempest.
. . .but not. Even the stones had betrayed him. He could have spent a hundred years and been no better than now.
Well that is an interesting place to start here. There's an sort of abstract sense to everything here as we get underway, this really doesn't feel like sort of the more typical way to start a chapter at all, and I'm liking it at the moment. There's a very interesting vibe it creates that adds a sense of almost unintended mystery to the situation.
Cream-colored walls in the vacuum. In and out of time.
He needed to open the window.
There was a body in the backyard. Fool that he was, he wanted her close; oh, so close. He wanted her close, didn’t wanna forget her. Grow flowers on the spot, smell her. Instead, the flowers burned in the vase.
She had told him she wanted to be cremated. One airless night, when the drapes lay like a shroud. She had told him; she had told him her hopes and dreams - then.
She had burnt them down. I want to be cremated.He hadn’t done it. He couldn't do it.
Oh wow, well that took a turn. From the more sort of mysterious and slightly abstract vibe we have just straight up nose dived into a body and requests not being honored and this is now turning into an entirely different style of story here, not that I'm complaining so far, this is quite the rollercoaster but I'm liking this direction perhaps simply from how different it is.
So she lay, under the ground - under his ground. So she lay, buried. And all the while his soul screamed for release. Every night he opened the drapes; every night hoping for air, and instead, the air bore memories of her. Rocked them slowly to his side till he could smell them.
God! He needed to open the window.
Again; he refused to move
Well...hmm and we're playing with a slightly more abstract tune. This is a very interesting little combo here so far. I will say it definitely leaves us with quite a lot to be thinking about here in terms of what some of these more abstract images could truly mean and also about the thought process behind the not so abstract parts of this.
One spring the first flower had grown. Called it the Tear Flower. No water, spiteful sun, watered by his soul. Burned the flowers - cremated them. He owed her that. Smelled her memories, set her soul free. Allowed it to roam. Hers was the only free one, while his soul was in the walls.
Never quite there. Never quite felt.
Blood still on his arm.
He felt he was mad, smelling the flowers, he could feel the madness caressing him with its black forked tongue. He could feel it; yes.
Well these images are slowly getting more and more intriguing here and you can almost sort of sense the madness that's being mentioned taking over the imagery and the tone of the piece. I don't know if that's intentional but I love the effect that it manages to provide to this here.
He was mad.
Mad to burn the only connection he had with her, mad to smell her hair, her hands, her neck. Oh, God! He could almost feel her. So close.
Silence.
The flower still burned.
He had a fool notion that if he burnt the flower to ash she might come back, that somehow the flower had become her.
Well this is a lovely little almost moment of clarity in this spiraling madness as we get a bit of a confirmation on what exactly triggered the thoughts from earlier and suddenly the idea of this madness he seems to speak of also hits you just that little more grounded in this idea.
“Silas?”He didn’t turn. She wasn’t there.
“Silas,” a faint buzz in the air. A flicker. “Silas, you fool.”
He didn’t turn - wouldn’t turn.
“Silas. . . the flower.” Another buzz, another flicker. “Silas.” Pleading now. Desperate.
He wouldn’t turn.
“Silas.” Gasping. Staring through cold glass. “Silas! Silas! You fool.”
He couldn’t turn. . .
. . . He finally turned.
She wasn’t there.
The Tear Flower had burned to ash.
Well....a little bit of a return to true abstractness for it to all be capped off. I think that does leave us with a powerful and still somehow simultaneously rather open image there in terms of exactly what went down in a less metaphorical sense. Its a lovely choice I think to cap off this piece and the rollercoaster it has been.
Aaaaand that's it for this one.
Overall: Overall, I think this makes for a very solid piece here. It leaves you feeling quite a few emotions and at the same time leaves you thinking if maybe you did actually understand it correctly. Definitely not the sort of thing you can only read the one time.
As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.
Stay Safe
Harry
Points: 253913
Reviews: 4100
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