   therentyoupay 8/5/11 . chapter 1Absolutely gorgeous! Your writing style is so beautiful. Everything you write is so lovely, but these following paragraphs were especially powerful:
"He was a ghost. It hurt at first. She thought he hated her, maybe, but found it wasn't that. There was some kind of pain about him. Eventually she learned when to approach him, when to touch him, to offer help, to talk to him, when he would walk away or flinch away or close the door in her face. She learned that when he asked for seconds, it was as if he were telling her dinner was perfect. If he left his door open, he didn't mind her stopping in to bring him tea, or toast, or he didn't mind if she thought to stop and just talk a moment to him. If he was awake late and sitting at the kitchen table, staring out the window and unable to sleep, it was OK for her to sit and share the silence with him. If he lingered at the door while putting on his shoes for a moment longer than usual, he wouldn't mind if she walked with him. It was a dance to which she became comfortable and accustomed."
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What a beautiful analogy, and such perceptive insight:
"Coming home was a bit like waking in the grips of a pain medication. Waking there, in the hospital, you are aware of the pain that is like a dull rock in your stomach, disguised with drips or pills or creams. He's aware of her the entire time, but the full realization of her comes later, when he sees her pass in the hallway, or when she calls him in for dinner, or is heard starting the washing machine with the load of clothes he brought home. She sings, sometimes, in the shower. She smells like jasmine flowers in water. She is like a ghost. He wonders, sometimes, if he'd prefer her clear of that haze he surrounds her with. But who, really, if given the choice, would endure the pain, wouldn't accept the drugs that mask its sharp, metallic flavour?"
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Again, with the powerful insight and a really fantastic way with words:
"She waits alot, in this life. Not that she isn't a busy person. And it doesn't make her melancholy person. Why does everyone, she wonders, think of waiting as something sad? Perhaps she isn't in tune with her feelings as everyone else is. More than once, friends have told her to divorce him. "You're miserable," they tell her, and they don't believe her when she says she isn't. "How can you take his emotional abuse?" they ask her, and she has to wonder what they're talking about. "He's never with you. Does he talk to you?" The fact that they slept in separate beds she keeps to herself. The fact that he had never kissed her - almost doesn't count, and even less does it count if it was only once - she keeps to herself."
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I can see this being very realistic. Your portrayal of the characters is very alluring and believable:
"It surprised him that she said yes. She stared down at his hands a moment, and the ring there, and after a span of two, full, nervous breaths, she looked up - "Yes. I'll marry you." She didn't smile when she said it - she seemed to see something in his intentions, she seemed to know he did not love her. But there was resolve in her face - she would care for him, as she always had, even if he treated her like nothing.
Realizing that, later, as he lay alone in bed, made him so violently sick that he vomited. It was like killing someone. What kind of woman could she be, Sakura, to agree to live her life with a man who cared nothing for her? Staring up at the cieling, eyes half lidded, he decided to call it off. But seeing her the next day, finding him at the training field with a lunch in her arms and a smile on her face..."
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Powerful moment:
"Sakura goes about the house smiling. She waits up for him when he comes home. She doesn't seem to mind that she is what gives all the joy in the household, that he sucks it all in, never full, that he offers nothing back, that he only takes and takes and takes. And she allows it to him. She sells so much of herself, and takes nothing in return.
It makes him hate her for being so weak.
It makes him love her for being so beautiful.
To see her face, one last time... Seeing a shadow in this smeared glass of vision, he forces his hand to move and his throat to speak: "do not call Sakura," he says. And again, to make sure they know, "do not call my wife.""
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And naturally, I love absolutely everything about the end. Definitely one for the Favorites list! |
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