Hello! I just wanted to say enjoy my piece! I wanted to write a random scene on grief, and this is what resulted. I'm only thirteen and in search for any kind of feedback, so please enjoy and tell me your thoughts! Thanks :)
I sigh slowly, watching my breath come out in a white cloud. It dissolves into the air in less than two seconds.
I wonder if that was how long her last moments were.
I close my eyes and shake my head, feeling my eyes start to sting, a warning of tears. No, no, no. I commanded myself before coming here not to think about it. Thinking leads to guilt, and guilt just leads to more grieving. And the last time I allowed myself to think, the pain and sorrow had stabbed into me like a dagger, ripping at my heart and tearing through my skin.
Now is just the time to sit and stay with her, even if she’s currently below me, in the ground. She deserves that much from me after what I had done.
I lean back on the icy stone behind me, trying to imagine it as her real body, her real back. We used to always do that—it was our way of showing we could count on each other. I could almost smell her fragrant scent of roses and feel her warmth coursing through my veins. Her tiny, skinny shoulders would always shake against my back in a laugh she always managed to find, and her spine insistently push against mine in an attempt to cheer me up on my darkest days.
Her hair—it would tickle the back of my neck whenever she nodded her head to the rock music we used to listen to in her room.
I inhale a shaky breath. “I miss you,” I whisper to her, though I’m not sure if she can hear. “I’m so… so sorry.” I clench my hands into fists to stop them from trembling. She wouldn’t want me to break down. I promised her I wouldn’t.
A snowflake gently falls on my nose, and I look up at the gray sky, a heavy lump in my throat. It was snowing on the night she got hit. She told me she was going to be back, and I remember glancing at her blue front door swinging shut—the last indication I saw of her alive.
If only I had known. If only I had foreseen the future and stopped her from getting into the car and journeying to a place that was only a mere seven minutes away. If only I hadn’t asked her to do something I could have done myself.
She was supposed to come back fifteen minutes later, carrying two pizza boxes in her hands and wearing a triumphant grin on her beautiful, endlessly fascinating face. We were supposed to pull an all-nighter together, chowing on junk food and playing video games and kissing and laughing and—
“No,” I yell to myself, hearing my voice break over the single syllable. A harsh and chilly wind blows through, slapping my face and screaming at me. I squeeze my eyes shut and cover my ears, trying to block the blaming voices from swirling into my ears. You could’ve stopped her. It’s your fault. She’s dead now because of you and your stupid idea of getting pizza.
Images shoot up in my mind, each flashing as quickly as a camera would, and with it comes a flood of sounds, each loud enough to shatter the earth into pieces. I hear the squealing tires and tremendous crash of glass and metal. I see the blotchy, scratched-up face of her killer, his wild, drunk eyes wide with horror. The red roses clasped in her cold, lifeless hands. Her name freshly carved on the gravestone I’m leaning on right now. The voice of the priest, and my own voice shortly after that.
Only sixteen years of life. So much ahead of her.
She bragged to me she was ready to start driving—her license had proved it. She was prepared, she had said to me, but nothing could have prepared her for what had happened. It wasn’t her fault—I could almost hear her steady, strong voice telling me it was. She was always that type of person to pin the blame on herself.
I take my hands away from my head. There is finally only silence. I twist around, staring at the letters and numbers etched onto the surface, marking the end of her life and what could’ve been. I place my hand on the hard stone, right on top of her name.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I tell her, my vision blurry, and I’m suddenly shrinking to the ground, curled in a ball, feeling as if the weight of the whole world were bearing down on my chest.
“I love you,” I say through my teeth. “I’ve loved you ever since I was nine, and I will still love you now. Forever.” I keep my hand on her name, ignoring the shuddering of my body and the hot tears pouring out of my eyes. “I never got to tell you that.”
And then suddenly there is a slender body next to me and a voice in my ear. Not one that shouts, but one that whispers. I can feel her warm breath on my face and her fingers on top of mine, soothing and faint. Her words are soft.
“I love you, too.”
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125,020 Literary Works • 672,861 Reviews
This short story really gave me the chills. It's one of those that really hit me and made me go, "Oh, my God". So, good job on that. I definitely love your style of writing. Personally, I would get rid of "her real back" on the paragraph that begins with, "I lean back on the icy stone..." and then describe the way they sat in the next sentence. But again, that's just how I would've done it. I also like how there was a sense of mystery in the beginning with how the narrator's friend died, which was caused by you writing how the narrator blamed themselves. While I find that nothing is done necessarily wrong, as Neeraj99 already said, there is always room for improvement. Overall, I definitely love this story, and I can't wait to read more from you.
Hahaha thank you!
Your first three sentences pack a great punch. You give us some setting right away—we’re outside, and it’s cold—and a nice image for swift endings, and then the third sentence drives the point home and makes it clear what the story’s going to be about. Well done.
The third paragraph is treading the thin line between seeming like it’s true to the thought patterns of someone grappling with grief and intentional vagueness designed to make the reader guess without giving us enough clues to actually figure out what you mean. Which side it falls on is going to be largely subjective; for me, it’s vague enough to be annoying.
Personally? I’d get rid of the sentence “Thinking leads to guilt…” and just start the next one with “The last time…” Especially because in the next paragraph you go on to be much more direct about how Narrator feels guilty, with “She deserves that much from me after what I had done.” That tells us much more directly that Narrator has something to feel actually guilty for, and the way it’s phrased shows us very clearly that it’s a source of regret.
I like the image of Narrator and Friend sitting back to back and just hanging out with each other, and being close to each other. And the juxtaposition of that to Narrator sitting back to back with a cold headstone in the snow is lovely, in a bitter sort of way.
I don’t think the paragraph starting with “If only I had known” is really necessary. The first sentence is good on its own, and the ones after it are just variations on a theme, which can get boring. Either going straight from “the last I saw of her alive” to “she was supposed to come back” or moving “If only I had known” to the end of the previous paragraph and then going into “she was supposed to come back” would be cleaner, and less repetitive.
“Only sixteen years of life. So much ahead of her” hits really hard, standing alone like that.
The last bit, after Narrator starts talking, is great! It feels like a purging, I think because the prose switches from internal monologues wherein Narrator beats himself up for wanting some pizza to reassuring Friend that it wasn’t *her* fault, and feeling crushed by the grief but also getting some of it out. And I’m not sure how real Friend’s ghost is, if it’s just an imaginary construct of Narrator’s or not, but I don’t think it matters. Either way, it’s a very sweet ending, and a good place for the emotional arc to stop.
Thanks for the review!