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skylarklies β retreating.
Published: 2011-02-13 03:38:07 +0000 UTC; Views: 273; Favourites: 6; Downloads: 1
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Description
she stands in the heart spatter andwatches the sun fall behind the horizon;
its tangerine meets green meets blue.
where are the stars if jetstreams left behind are
permanent scars?
her face is a telling cavern
worth venturing
or leaving (because you're too afraid to see).
she's got these ankles that whisper you secretsβ
a heart at her feet. and she's gangly, too.
not in an attractive way.
in a clumsy, bony, awkward way.
a gossip-worthy way.
like the sun grew her too tall and too small all at once,
and never regretted a moment of it.
hug her. she'll crumble to dust in your goddamn hands.
and among all this wobbling and tripping around,
she drags the old memories with shackles.
her ankles.
but you wanted a taste. just a brief stint.
a hand to hold. a crutch.
she's a skyscraper. a blemish on your
perfect cities.
the sky's a neverland when you drag a bullet through
her rippling waters. this girl, this woman.
she watches, saying little beneath her full lip,
eying you as you stumble
with her fractured heart, sloshing, spilling it
every which way.
but even with your decaying fragility,
she holds.
and she fades to mute colors and dry skin,
folding herself back into the cocoon from which
she'd once left for you
(and may not spring deftly from again).
you are her tomb.
her final piece.
a shell of what she hoped you could be.
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Comments: 6
The images in this are great, "her fractured heart, sloshing" and "she stands in the heart spatter" are two favorites.
I enjoy your punctuation in that you use it how you want to (period outside of the parenthesis, no capitals) and also use it consistently (so it doesn't just look like bad grammar issues.) Lovely.
Hmmmm. As far as a critique goes... there is one thing I noticed. You end some lines at the end of a phrase and others you cut in the middle at a word like a preposition... "a bullet through/her rippling waters" vs "you stumble/with her fractured heart" - sometimes I know people will switch if there's an emphasis, to make it more jarring, but I can't see a pattern here. It seems mostly to do with not having longer lines? I could be completely wrong. That's all I saw that wasn't a positive.
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thank you. :>
and no, you're quite right on that. generally i write like books are, i guess you could say. where the lines end and are relatively inflexible. i used to write in a dinky notebook and just posted poems straight out of it, no editing. so that's probably where i learned it. i kind of like just leaving them that way, but i do understand they can be a little jarring, as you suggested.
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Wow... this gorgeous. I was sure when I started reading that it was going to read just like every other character profile, but by the end you had me converted!
"like the sun grew her too tall and too small all at once,
and never regretted a moment of it.
hug her. she'll crumble to dust in your goddamn hands."
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oh, thank you. :> I love weird things and how words shouldn't fit but do.
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You have some beautiful words here. That said, if your goal is storytelling you probably want a revision on this piece. The transition from talking about/describing "her" in the beginning to "you" at the end is a little clumsy. It seems like there is an opportunity here for some really interesting mirroring since you talk about her being clumsy and fragile enough to crumble to dust and then the "you" in the story stumbles and has decaying fragility. Play it up. There is also something interesting about "her" strength at the end, she withdraws but doesn't crumble. Overall I really like it but some revision could make it amazing.
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