Alright: for those of you who didn’t read yesterday’s post, I’m going to be using the bulk of my remaining 100 days to explore writing fiction. Feel free to comment on the content and what it gets stewing in your brain, or just in critiquing the writing, the feedback would be interesting:
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He’s been gone eight months now. The smell of him’s still in his clothes, though his scent has long since left the sheets.
I sit in his closet sometimes, feet tucked up under me, just to breathe him in. His clothes brush my face in the darkness, like some childhood game of hide and seek… Ha! What I’m hiding from is no friend of mine.
I’m too young to be a widow. Nobody calls me that. I wish they would. I feel that old.
Valerie Roney 
“He was too young to die.”
They would pass me and try
To lessen the pain that I felt.
“She had such a long life,
That was empty of strife.”
Unknowing the hand she was dealt.
All the lies told today
I’d just smile and say
My thanks for the caring you’ve shown.
I would know what was true
While I remembered you
Once returned to our home all alone
We are blessed to grieve,
Blessed again to release.
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To continue my Wordsworth theme:
“That though the radiance which once so bright
be now forever taken from my sight.
Though nothing can bring back the hour
of splendour in the grass,
glory in the flower.
We will grieve not,
rather find strength in what remains behind.”
I’m finding myself with similar feelings of loss. I can really feel what your character is feeling as she sits in the closet and smell the human scent that reminds her of her loss. My loss is a relationship loss and I’m grieving. I don’t have the luxury of a closet full of scents but I do live in a small town where there are locations that bring back a memory and sets off an intense longing.
I not only miss my friend, I also miss the way I felt when I was around him. I miss the person I was when he was with me. So somehow I have to rediscover that part of me, get to know her and keep her to myself so I don’t lose her again when another relationship falls by the wayside.
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You are so smart! And so beautiful!
Love the poem, and the “strength in what remains behind.”
So wonderful to see you know your discovery remains behind, you’ll never lose that part of yourself.
You RAWK!!!
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I got caught up in my reflection that I forgot to comment on the actual writing. It is short but very sweet. It is probably how the character would have written it. Words that come from the heart in such poignant moments are often said in short succinct phrases. And the combination of the gentleness of words and brevity makes me feel the longing in a more real way. It’s a two edged sword for me as a reader. I want to read more of this woman’s story but at the same time I know to do so would push the knife of sorrow deeper into my heart. But maybe this is what my heart needs, to bleed and cry.
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Who knows, maybe this is just the start of a story about coming back to life…
Somebody should ask the author to finish it. -grin-
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um, I mean the widow coming back to life, not the husband… though that could be the start of a kick-ass zombie romance novel.
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I hear zombie romance is very trendy at the moment!
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Ha!
Hmm, that is a surprisingly inspiring idea…
Love of the Living Dead?
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Zombies are very trendy at the moment at the daycare I work at too!
Running away from zombies, building zombie houses… Right up there with spiderman, zipper accessories, Knock Knock jokes, and those new shaped jelly bracelets.
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