The golden boy
Touched the sun
And burned his fingers black.
He didn’t mind it though;
“I like the pain,”
“Why?”
“Because I deserve it.”
The glass girl
Gaped at him;
No one deserves that pain.
She didn’t understand his hurt.
“You don’t deserve it,”
“Yes-”
“No!”
He took her hand,
Looked into her eyes,
He already saw the sadness within.
He yearned to tell her now,
“If you knew the truth…”
“I’d what?”
“You would hate me forever.”
Don’t be so dramatic,
She wanted to yell.
Why was he being like this?
She yearned for his secret now.
“Please just talk to me.”
“I…”
“Please”
How could he tell her?
It would be their ruin.
The seconds became deafening silence between them.
He could only hear his stampeding heart.
“It was me.”
“Tell me you’re lying”
“I am sorry.”
‘Sorry’, that’s all she gets?
She straightens up her face.
He didn’t deserve to see her hurt.
Her heart was steady when she said,
“I think you should go.”
Explanation:
I wanted to play with word structure and parallelism so I came up with a pattern. Each stanza has 4 lines of thought for the character and one back and forth dialogue. As well as, the first 2 lines of each pair had 3 words and the other two had 5 words. After that, one word got added on for the next pair to show the escalation between both characters. I didn’t want to show a similarity in word structure in the dialogue because I wanted to show that emotion is illogical and therefore shouldn’t have a fixed pattern. Lastly, for all the pairs their 4th line showed parallelism with a word besides the last pair.
As for the characters I wanted to show the irony through their names. The golden boy refers to how he should be a prime example and that he can do no harm however he winds up doing something horrible to the girl. I wanted to show that even the best people do bad things and nothing is black and white. The glass girl implies that she would easily shatter however when it came to it she was the stronger one between the two of them. I did this to convey the people we perceive to be weak may wind up being the bravest people we know.
Feature Image: https://gfycat.com/tediousscaryfly
Dear Simran,
Wow! I like the structure that you came up with. The addition of dialogue between stanzas allowed for more context of the events . The irony of the golden boy was clever, and I was immediately reminded of Icarus, the boy who flew too close to the sun. The fragility of the girl was well depicted through the glass as well; it formed an interesting contrast that brought the piece together in a way.
One thing that I feel was missing was what exactly hurt the girl. I think you decided to keep it ambiguous as a stylistic choice, but I feel that even a short phrase would have provided a fuller picture.
Your writing is very unique, and I appreciate its succinctness. I find myself writing too much and going off on unnecessary tangents, but you can stick to the point so well.
I look forward to reading more of your work!
Sincerely,
Nazeefa
Dear Nazeefa,
Thank you very much for your comment! I liked how you pointed out that my piece was very to the point because I usually go off on a tangent and I’m glad I didn’t this time! I will look into adding what happened to the girl and intertwine it in my piece if I can. Thank you and have a lovely day!
Truly,
Simran C.
Dear Simran,
This is my first comment on your blog, and I must say your writing style is truly unique. This is a different tangent from the post itself, but I really like your blog aesthetics – it seems so airy and seems like a place where I would hold my ideals.
Anyways, now to the actual post. There was something about the structure of this piece that really got my attention – the whole idea of ‘4 lines of thought and one back and forth dialogue’ is interesting for two reasons: first, just because it looks really good aesthetically and also because it reveals that the characters focus more on thought than they do on action. In this post, there was a really good build up of tension between the two characters, and it ended without the readers knowing why, which added an element of mystery to it. The whole irony of the glass girl being able to control her vulnerability, and the golden boy being capable of doing something wrong emphasized the idea that the world is not what it seems to be – there aren’t any categories when it comes to human behaviour.
For the recommendations bit I didn’t have anything other than maybe making it a bit longer. However, I also wanted to hear your opinion on a line in your post when the boy said, “I like the pain…Because I deserve it” because it left me feeling conflicted. For me, personally, I understand how people will regret what they do, but to go as far as liking the pain which follows regret seemed very interesting to me because it’s not something I have seen.
All in all, this was a clever and well-structured post, which left me satisfied with my dissatisfaction of not knowing what the conflict was between the two. Can’t wait to see your future posts!
Sincerely,
Abhay
Dear Abhay,
Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment- and a very nice one that too! I am really glad that you said: “there aren’t any categories when it comes to human behaviour.” I agree with you 100% on that matter and that most things are definitely not as they seem. As for your question, I used the line “I like the pain…becasue I deserve it” because a) I really wanted to emphasize the regret they felt to a point where the character feels happy for the pain since if they do receive bad deeds (it will in a way) make them think it might cancel out some of the wrong they have done. b) I wanted to put that in there because personally when I have done something very wrong, even if I have made it ok again, I feel better if something bad happens to me, or if something bad happens to me I feel like I deserve it in some way. (Which now writing it seems kind of depressing).
Thank you for your comment and have a great rest of your day!
Truly,
Simran C.
them they feel even more guilty (if that makes sense).