If I ever had a home, it lays in pieces along the road.
Discordant slews of brick strewn carelessly down the I-80.
Child prints echoing on the slick black-top, illuminated by passing, gracing headlights.
And the shadows.
Instead of painting peeling walls, they creep across the desert of the highways when the sun grows weary of shining and our bodies sizzle within this speeding truck.
They devour the parts of ourselves that fall away so easily to the asphalt. Like meat from cracking bone above lusting fires.
The shadows grow longer in the night. Those times when Dad would tempt the black horizon with the gas pedal and Mom would tempt his unforgiving hands...
Sobs and desperate peals of laughter haunt glimmering gravel and distant jabbing shapes against dusky skies.
If I ever knew a place where I saw myself in gleaming, singing memories more than any other, then it would likely be between neon strips of white and yellow paint.
My feet can't seem to make sense of cool, cedar floors and cushy carpet that would drink in this pain if I'd let it. Too used to charred ground...to burning soles and flashing, golden streaks of interrupted prayer.
The sound of rain on windshields than windows...
Walls and ceilings spin and twist before my nervous, darting eyes; the blur of luminescent white plaster every once in a while giving way to dark, jagged figures and even sharper words that etched themselves into an equally rugged part of me.
No, it's the lurch against uneven pavement; the familiarity of a cage of glass and steel; the odd sensation of this world - these blue skies wider than open screaming mouths, tar harder than fists and slamming doors - being crushed against these restless bones, that steadies me.
I inherited a slow agony and festering rage; a compulsion to ram myself into the skyline; break, shatter, crumble the ascending dark like a smile under Daddy's bad day. Take it in each hand. Feel for myself what it's like to destroy...
We are a family that aches. And only the bending of tendons and smoking rubber soothes us. For what could a house be, if none of us has ever seen the good of white walls? Bones weren't made for things so stoic and solid, anyway. But for things fluid, instead.
Like flesh and muscle. Like wax.
And like candles, we burn. Like slaves through burning fields in the night, we run.
...The faint starlight...the silence of an empty, desert road, always seem too welcome.
Hey, I just want to start by saying that I thought this story was amazing! You have an amazing talent in terms of depiction which is something that I find a lot of authors now a days have trouble with. I agree that there wasn't much of a story line or plot but I don't really think that, that is a bad thing. I like to classify pieces of writing as two things; thoughtful and plotful (Yes I realize that plotful is not a real word but whatever). Thoughtful stories are the kind of stories that make you reflect on real life while plotful stories have interesting plots but no real philosophical meaning. I thought that your story was amazing simply because it was so thoughtful and made me reflect on my own life. Even though you didn't really have a plot you still dropped clues about the family throughout the story which I thought was great because it allowed me to kind of create my own story in the back of my mind while I was reading. I also thought that your comparisons were absolutely amazing! You put some things together that I would have never thought of and it definitely enhanced the story. Overall, I thought it was amazing and that you do have an incredible talent. I really look forward to reading more of your work!
Amazing?! Really feeling the love here at yws! Thank you, honestly.
It's encouraging to hear that even when critically lacking, I've made up for it otherwise. And that I nailed every effect I intended this story to have.
Thanks for commenting!!
Hey.
I'm gonna keep this concise.
Things I liked:
¤The narration. I don't know if you realized this or not but there's a phrase professional writers use for your type of narrator. It's called "distance remembering narrator." It refers to a narrator who is recounting events of his or her past. I think that this is one of the most effective types of first person storytelling because it reveals how the protagonist had grown or changed as a result of the events I'm the story. So, yeah. Keep it up.
¤The imagery. You focus the reader's attention on the small, mundane details and breathe life into them, which isn't easy for most young writers.
¤The voice. Flowery prose tends to irritate me. Partly because it comes across as being preoccupied with using pretty words rather than actually saying anything. But mostly because real people don't talk like that, not without being pretentious anyway. This story manages to avoid that, I think, because it feels like we're not really being spoken to, but instead getting a look inside the speaker's head. The only thing I can think of to enhance that effect would be to add some dialogue. That way we can see a contrast between the way thenarrator thinks and how he actually talks.
Things to improve on:
¤Normally I'd have three points here but in this case I feel like they all relate to the same thing. There's no plot, no scene, no conflict, no story at all.
Like I said, I enjoyed the little details you showed me, but I didn't see the point of them. Why is the narrator telling me these things? What am I supposed to take away from all this? How has the protagonist changed as a result of them? These are questions which the conflict is supposed to address. You cannot have a story without conflict. And you cannot have conflict without there being something at stake.
And that right there is the root of the problem. There's nothing at stake for the narrator, or if there is he sure didn't bother letting the reader know what it is.
Plot, character development, action, scene and dialogue are all tools the author uses to reveal conflict; tools which are all completely absent from this story. In that sense it's not really a story at all, it's more like a prose poem. Which would be fine if you had submitted this in the poetry section. But you didn't. You presented it to us, the readers, as a short story so it's up to you to fulfill the requirements of one.
Look, I don't want you to get the idea that I don't like this piece of writing, but something gotta happen. Another character needs to show up, a bomb's gotta go off, something. Just get us out of the narrator's head and into the here and now.
Yeah, I definitely agree with you. I realized this myself, reading over all my other stories written recently. Not much action.
So, thank you for seconding that observation - needed it.
And thank you for the review in general!
Hi there!
I'm very impressed by this story. There is so much emotion in this that I can barely stand it. In a good way, of course. It's almost overwhelming, but that's what you're trying to tell us about this family so that's a good thing. The words you use in this piece are ones that I would never think to use. They're very powerful and instill such emotion in the reader. And this almost reads like a poem with all of the similes. Your words flow together so easily that I read through this without seeing any break in the flow.
I honestly cannot find anything wrong with this. I think it's a great story and you obviously put a lot of work into this. Good job!
This is one of my favorite lines in the whole story. It's so full of imagery and felling. Awesome!
So like I said at the beginning, this is a great story. I give you a 5/5!
Keep writing!
**Noelle**
a 5/5 O.O
wow. haha thanks. you've not only left a beautiful comment, but also boosted my confidence...and maybe even blown up my head. :p
thanks again!!