I’ve had this thing sitting on my Palm Pilot for a while and I was wondering if it’s any good. It’s short, plotless prose, so there’s no chance I could actually sell it anywhere, or at least anywhere I’d like it to. I also don’t know of any free venues it’d be appropriate for. Still, I wrote it a couple of years ago, and I rather like it, so I’d like your take on it. Is it any good? I’m suspect it might be just a load of pretentious twaddle or a load of trite twaddle. I’m not sure which would be worse. :eek: It might even be akin to typical teenage girl death poetry, which would be the worst nightmare of all, since I’m no longer a teenager! I am prepared for negative criticism, although I’d prefer specifics if you have any. If it isn’t any good, I’d like to know what to do so I don’t make the same mistake again, and yes, I realize the same mistake might be writing something like that in the first place! The piece is personal – it’s a variant on my life story, but that, to me isn’t relevant. I’m also putting this in MPSIMS, because indulging my vanity like this fits all three of the criteria. It’s not important enough to go into Cafe Society.
Anyway, here’s the piece. It’s called “They Broke Me of Dancing First” for lack of a better title.
Looking forward to your opinions,
CJ
They broke me of dancing first. In one awful evening of mockery and laughter they convinced me that anyone as unacceptable as I was must be clumsy, awkward, graceless.
My appearance was next. Call a child ugly long enough, disparage her looks, her face, her hair long enough, and she ceases looking in the mirror because what she sees there can never measure up.
They took my best friend then. Why not? She was someone I could talk with, someone I could laugh with, someone I could be myself with and be accepted and loved. Together, we could stand and face them. Alone, unable to defend her, knowing I was to be next, I might falter.
Next, they took my voice. “You know you can’t sing.” “Quit drowning out the choir.” We don’t want to hear you. We will not hear you. We do not hear you.
Finally I screamed. A child’s desperate cry for help, a drowning man’s desperate plea for rescue. That is when they should have killed me.
They didn’t. When I told them I was dying, they encouraged me to get on with it, by word by action. Too cruel, too unwilling to show common decency, each insult, each callous word removed another piece of skin, of soul. Robbed of one I defended, I could not defend myself. Robbed of voice, I insisted on speaking. Robbed of movement, I struggled. Robbed of joy, I still had the temerity to hope. Reduced to nothing, I still dared to whisper to myself that I might be something.
I survived. Gasping, dying, weeping, bleeding, I refused to resign myself to the nothingness they condemned me to. Broken, shattered beyond all repair, still my heart would not stop and my soul would not cease. If living would be painful, it would still be living. If I survived, found heart, found soul, found breath, they might yet be wrong.
Years later, entombed in silence, I screamed and it was answered. Sinking beneath waves of pain, a rope was thrown to me, wrapped around me, and I was rescued. My voice, overloud from going unheard for so long, was acknowledged. My song, first in a whisper, then growing louder, was listened to. My words were no longer thrown against me as weapons but restored to me as healing. We do hear you, we will hear you, and what you have to say is beautiful. I looked around and found I had new and different friends. People of kind hearts who laughed, who loved, and who accepted. People who would stand with me and defend me as once I defended others. Appearance, too, changed and altered, though my features remained the same. The common cruelties which once surrounded me became unthinkable and that which was once called ugly now marveled to hear itself called beautiful. Finally, hesitatingly, I danced and found my feet were sure. Restrained on a dance floor or unrestrained in my home, leaping, twisting, moving with joy through space and time I reclaimed my dance and my soul. Smiling, awed by wonder, though once I was broken I found I shall be whole.
