When I got older, I fell apart. My toes left one by one, my fingers left two by two, my eyes sprang loose, my ears leaked out, my legs just made their way, my arms dropped down, melted away. My lungs took in air before pushing it out to the heavens. My heart tried to stay, but it skipped too many beats. My breasts flopped back and forth between their sundry sizes and then suck themselves back to the day of my birth. Pink and tiny and raw.
When I got older, I tried to hold it together. It’s hard when you’ve died and come back and people don’t know what to expect and they are scared to even touch you. “I’m not going to break!” I’d want to yell. But the voice was gone. The strength was gone. No one, not even the sort of boyfriend, could look me in my sunken eyes. No honesty. No honesty until the sort of boyfriend needed to be too honest and tell me, not in person, but via a three-page letter on the beige paper with the holes on the edges that he needed to move on.
I just saw those frayed pages stuffed into a cubby in my bedroom. Hidden from my husband. Maybe hiding from me, too. I left the pages in the cubby.
Hiya! Were we on a wavelength this month? You had me at the first line. I felt this narrator.
“When I got older, I tried to hold it together. It’s hard when you’ve died and come back and people don’t know what to expect and they are scared to even touch you.” And “I’m not going to break!” That shift in how the narrator felt in the world – great.
Love the ending. Opening up a whole other vein. And the word “cubby” – evocative of day care and kindergarten. Bringing a soft, childlike quality to the ending.
Kristen!
The details of the body falling apart is compelling. That first line is a common phrase but you take it to the extreme and it’s a rich scene that pulls a reader in. The three-page letter is especially interesting to me.
It is resonant to have the feeling of a body failing you. The feelings of people assuming things about you and then not being able to find the voice to dispute. The things we hide from ourselves and the ones closest to us.
There is this feeling of failed understanding that comes through for me.
The use of the repeated “was gone” is impactful – not just in the immediate of the strength and the voice but all the things this character has lost and is trying to regain.
Beautiful work. Thank you for sharing!
Tammy
I like this structure: Par. 1: When I got older, I fell apart. Par. 2: When I got older, I tried to hold it together. Chilling effect. We use these terms in a figurative sense — “falling apart” and “getting yourself together” — but you take them to a new level. And then you throw in the bit of the old love affair. “. . .the sort of boyfriend needed to be too honest and tell me, not in person, but via a three-page letter on the beige paper with the holes on the edges that he needed to move on.” Adding the detail about the letter, so we can visualize it, is effective, and you leave us with the other visual image of the crumbled up letter hidden in a cubbyhole where (maybe) the narrator’s husband won’t see it. This is the kind of flash nf that will stay with me.
hi Kristen,
thanks for sharing. as a huge fan of russell edson, i deeply enjoyed this.
Hello Kristen.
Its quite beautiful how you seem to make light of common aging losses and changes, mostly inevitable for most of us,
The ‘coming back from death’ and the loss of support of the boyfriend – leaving a letter stuffed in a cubby is countered by ‘the husband’ whom we only learn of a as we also hear the letter is left behind. That’s a wallop of a story!
You’ve done a remarkable job of bringing a jarring & surprising twist. I love what I read as a sense of non-judgement on the narrator’s self.
Great work!
j
Hi Kristen, love this exploration of both real/ abstract versions of the body, in decay, falling apart, the essence of speed aging we all experience. The powerful brevity in telling the story of aging against the backdrop of the written break-up from a former boyfriend kept in a cubby. WOW! This piece is very powerful, potent in its clever compact punch.
Hi Kristen! Wow indeed….I certainly could identify with the body falling apart! It’s so creative and clever…and that last line is stunning.
Kristen: This concentrated little bottle of perfume will leave its tonality on my senses for a while. I loved “my heart tried to stay…” It takes the physical checklist to another place entirely.
“No honesty.” Wow! There are multiple layers of ambiguity and potential hidden truths (and lack thereof) here; from the boyfriend, to the friends, and maybe even the narrator.