hellomydarlingdear

Children, this is dirt. 

Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. –C.S. Lewis

I found this great piece of writing advice from C.S. Lewis on twitter today.(courtesy of @thatboycanteach)

I know the phrase “show don’t tell” confuses a lot of people who are new to critiquing/workshops, because all writing is telling… isn’t it? 

But this is exactly what writers are talking about when they use that phrase. 

This is also why, when critiquing your work, writers might tell you to remove adjectives and adverbs, or why you might hear that those two types of words are “bad writing.” It’s not that you’re never allowed to use an adjective or an adverb, but that–like Lewis says–it’s much more preferable to be terrified, than to be told something is terrifying. 

Careful, you don’t get any more bodies after this one. Not even reincarnation. So take care of this one as best you can. Darling girl, I know you hate being called darling girl because it makes your bones remember they are made of soft tissue when all you want to be is a wolf, snarling, snapping, you want to be more than the c-section you were raised from, the way in which you came out of the world dripping with want, with love, out of someone else who raised you warm and deep inside her like a miracle inside of another miracle that’s forgotten being a miracle is, in itself, a miracle.

I know you’d pack your mouth with candles if you could, if it meant burning away the wicks of all the words you regretted because they were too much sorry and not enough sorry for being sorry for being sorry for being. That you’d pack your limbs with salt to remind yourself once again that the world is not sweet enough, that there’s too much blood, that your grandmother took one look at you standing there before her, bleeding from between your legs, wondering why it was the world wouldn’t stop hurting you, and your grandmother reminded you to never forget that men believe bleeding is all women are good for.

And oh I know, girl, that you look at mount rushmore and want to carve something into yourself so deep that will remain too, long after time has come and gone and washed everything you know away like seaweed, you want something that matters, that will stay with you even when everyone else goes, even when all the trapdoors in your mind are falling open and falling through and you forget that cellar door is the most beautiful word in the English language because all you want is to hide yourself inside one. And girl I know that sometimes you wish something’d break inside you, not like glass, but more like an extra heart, a double heart that doesn’t have to do all the work of keeping you alive, but still feels and if it breaks it would get rid of the feeling. I know numb feels good. I know that’s ironic because numb means feeling nothing.

But your voice is a revolution and your palms are the bullets that hold it up. Kissing strangers until your mouth is swollen, until mouth turns into moth, until moth hits light and light explodes and moth burns up, will do no good, will send you to bed with sore teeth and a liking for bruises. Remember men like women who bleed. Remember never to let them see you bleed or they will come like bloodhounds to your door and pretend it wasn’t the scent they were looking for, but you all along.

Careful, this body is the last one you get, no more paper dolls in a row one after the other that replace the one before them that gets ripped off and crushed underfoot. No more paper dolls.

The morning after I killed myself, I woke up.

I made myself breakfast in bed. I added salt and pepper to my eggs and used my toast for a cheese and bacon sandwich. I squeezed a grapefruit into a juice glass. I scraped the ashes from the frying pan and rinsed the butter off the counter. I washed the dishes and folded the towels.

The morning after I killed myself, I fell in love. Not with the boy down the street or the middle school principal. Not with the everyday jogger or the grocer who always left the avocados out of the bag. I fell in love with my mother and the way she sat on the floor of my room holding each rock from my collection in her palms until they grew dark with sweat. I fell in love with my father down at the river as he placed my note into a bottle and sent it into the current. With my brother who once believed in unicorns but who now sat in his desk at school trying desperately to believe I still existed.

The morning after I killed myself, I walked the dog. I watched the way her tail twitched when a bird flew by or how her pace quickened at the sight of a cat. I saw the empty space in her eyes when she reached a stick and turned around to greet me so we could play catch but saw nothing but sky in my place. I stood by as strangers stroked her muzzle and she wilted beneath their touch like she did once for mine.

The morning after I killed myself, I went back to the neighbors’ yard where I left my footprints in concrete as a two year old and examined how they were already fading. I picked a few daylilies and pulled a few weeds and watched the elderly woman through her window as she read the paper with the news of my death. I saw her husband spit tobacco into the kitchen sink and bring her her daily medication.

The morning after I killed myself, I watched the sun come up. Each orange tree opened like a hand and the kid down the street pointed out a single red cloud to his mother.

The morning after I killed myself, I went back to that body in the morgue and tried to talk some sense into her. I told her about the avocados and the stepping stones, the river and her parents. I told her about the sunsets and the dog and the beach.

The morning after I killed myself, I woke up.

I made myself breakfast in bed. I added salt and pepper to my eggs and used my toast for a cheese and bacon sandwich. I squeezed a grapefruit into a juice glass. I scraped the ashes from the frying pan and rinsed the butter off the counter. I washed the dishes and folded the towels.

The morning after I killed myself, I fell in love. Not with the boy down the street or the middle school principal. Not with the everyday jogger or the grocer who always left the avocados out of the bag. I fell in love with my mother and the way she sat on the floor of my room holding each rock from my collection in her palms until they grew dark with sweat. I fell in love with my father down at the river as he placed my note into a bottle and sent it into the current. With my brother who once believed in unicorns but who now sat in his desk at school trying desperately to believe I still existed.

The morning after I killed myself, I walked the dog. I watched the way her tail twitched when a bird flew by or how her pace quickened at the sight of a cat. I saw the empty space in her eyes when she reached a stick and turned around to greet me so we could play catch but saw nothing but sky in my place. I stood by as strangers stroked her muzzle and she wilted beneath their touch like she did once for mine.

The morning after I killed myself, I went back to the neighbors’ yard where I left my footprints in concrete as a two year old and examined how they were already fading. I picked a few daylilies and pulled a few weeds and watched the elderly woman through her window as she read the paper with the news of my death. I saw her husband spit tobacco into the kitchen sink and bring her her daily medication.

The morning after I killed myself, I watched the sun come up. Each orange tree opened like a hand and the kid down the street pointed out a single red cloud to his mother.

The morning after I killed myself, I went back to that body in the morgue and tried to talk some sense into her. I told her about the avocados and the stepping stones, the river and her parents. I told her about the sunsets and the dog and the beach.

Don’t fall in love with me because I’ll go on dates with you to IKEA and kiss you on the bed until our tongues tingle and the security staff has to escort us away. Don’t fall in love with me because I taste like summer and you’re still stuck missing fall. Don’t fall in love with me because you think I’ll comfort you at 2am during a lightning storm. I am the storm.

I will go days at a time without washing my hair. I will be as stubborn as river silt and when I want something, I will chase it until it dies. I am just a scattering of broken stones bathed in morning light, a mermaid who cut off her own tail to survive on land in the world of men. I will be selfish. I will be the match to your paper. I will be messy and angry and not what you expect in a woman.

You think you can fall in love with me because I’ll show up at your doorstep at dawn begging for you to stay when you grow tired of me. But I will be at home, living, when you decide to go somewhere else. I will make solitude my lover. I don’t settle for men who make me their vacation home they can visit when the other woman becomes boring. There are no cocktails and white sands here. Only restlessness and salt.

You think you can fall in love with me because I am a tree house you can live in for days without wishing for solid ground. I am anything but solid. I am so many anxieties and oceans that even the sharks have learned to stay away at the scent of my blood.

You think that when I’m gone you’ll fall for another season just as easily. But you’re wrong. You’ll wake up every morning to the scent of flowers and hot sun, and I will capture you like an ant trapped in sap. So beautiful it can’t even move.

Seven Sisters Cliffs, England - March 2015