Short Story / Admire As Much As You Can @
“Admire as much as you can:
most people do not admire enough.”
Vincent Van Gogh
Butterflies
Everything was moving in slow motion. I could read it from the expression on her face, this was the end. I wasn’t sure why or how, but I knew it was over. It was the end of reality and the end of eternity. Gone was all that had been implanted by me in here heart. Never again would there be a symbol of love such as the one that had been built by the two of us. A symbol configured of two parallels intertwined within one lost romantic dream.
Just from her face alone, without words, any verbal communication, I knew she had found out.
No. How could she have possibly found out? No one knew, well almost no one knew. It wasn’t possible. My heart was beginning to race out of control.
Then came the tears. I was ashamed. How could I have made such a mess? Looking into those huge blue eye’s, watching tears tumble and roll down her beautiful face, tears that I induced, pain that I had created, unnecessary pain…
I awoke wrestling my pillow.
I still get chills when I see one of those letters in the mailbox. A small circle instead of a dot over the I, the line through the T’s that is more diagonal than horizontal and the lingering smell of Stella McCartney perfume. Who knew an envelope could evoke such emotion? My stomach seems to fill with butterflies, like the one’s I used to get on Christmas morning before I was able to muster enough courage to wake my parents before the sun had even thought about rising. My palms start to sweat and my heart seems to echo through me chest and down the street through my neighborhood. A sort of strange physical metamorphosis takes place right there at the end of my driveway, and I love it.
I lay motionless on my bed, alone, in the dark of my bedroom as unprovoked thoughts creep from the depths of my mind without guidance. Wonderful thoughts. Thoughts of her, thoughts of a girl that brings sweat to my brow and a boyish churn to my stomach.
I can smell the back of her neck, the mix of jasmine lotion and the natural odor of her skin; a wonderful aphrodisiac. She is so beautiful, her skin so soft, her eye’s, blue, are so wonderfully large. Overwhelming in fact, yet wonderful, innocent, untainted. She has been hear many times before, within the walls of my most guarded and valuable thoughts, like a spring flower in full bloom, radiating erotic mind foliage, like an orchid spreading its wings in the wind, and my mind will not let me dismiss it.
I hesitate for a moment before reaching inside the mailbox to retrieve the mauve envelope with two stamps. One stamp is in honor of the veterans of Desert Storm the other simply says LOVE. How ironic I think to myself, war and love together on a letter from an intimate friend. I wonder if this was intentional. I wonder if she is sending a message. A postdate to the left of the LOVE stamp indicates she’s in Maui. Probably at her parents vacation home. Over the years there have been many postdates; Paris, London, Africa, Indonesia. She always loved Islands. Hawaii was the chain she like most. I wish those b butterflies would go away.
Square ice-cubes, green kiwi-lime-pineapple juice, sushi, and Chicago Cubs baseball games, just a few memories of a summer that flutter across my eyelids as sleep evades me.
She introduced me to the magical world of Ernest Hemingway starting with the Sun Also Rises and ending with The Garden of Eden. I shared with her my to favorite bohemians, Jack Kerouac and Henry Miller. She thought On The Road was too masculine. A Tropic of Cancer was more her style. She liked to read Anne Sexton poems aloud at night when we were alone. I preferred Anais Nin. Sometimes she would cry.
She liked to make love to Sarah McLaughlin . She always came when she was on top. It’s difficult to forget the little dimples on her ass, the microscopic yet perfectly visible blonde hairs at the small of her back that always glistened in the sun, and how adorable the way she always chewed on her lower lip when she was nervous.
*
As the sun gently puts itself to rest on the horizon I ponder the contents of my most recent anxiety. I wonder if she feels like this when she sees one of my letters? I wonder if she gets butterflies like mine? I wonder if she misses me? I wonder, I wonder, I wonder? Open the damn letter!
*
I’m drunk with the memories of summer love. Dizzy from the intoxicating feeling each memory brings to the front of my mind. Everyone remembers the summer of love. It didn’t seem like it could possibly ever end but the end was always present.
Two lovers sit closely, fingers interlocked, as the sun rises in the distance and the wind seems to be singing. Alone the two lovers will dream of eternity. An eternity so simple only love is the necessary ingredient. But the sun must always set and the summer of love must eventually come to an end.
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I liked it. Vaguely reminded me of Henry Miller, as referenced in the text. You may want to touch on why they continue correspondence after the falling out. I would imagine it would fall along the lines of something resembling automated habit after having such an intimate relationship. I’m sure you could extract some rather salient and emotional material from mining that vein. Very solid and would work well as a piece of a larger work.
Minor thought: I don’t really think the use of “————————————————————-” to indicate breaks in linearity is necessary. Entirely up to you aesthetically.
Keep it up.
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At the second part, after the first separation thing (forgive me, for I don’t know it’s name) I fell in love with the story. All of your descriptions are beautiful, and your choice of words often seemingly perfect.
Towards the end though, my youth took over and I grew anxious. You had drawn me in; I cared. Now I was ready for something to care about. The third to last section is an example, while it was lingering. The last paragraph in that section is beautiful, and the last sentence of the proceeding paragraph is equally wonderful, but I still feel if you removed the whole section your story would be missing nothing, and might actually be better.
You succeeded wildly in capturing emotion: I certainly sympathized with the character, though I felt I was given little to sympathize about.
An interesting story and point of view and I like where and how you took this, while there were some errors indeed in this piece that took away from it in the areas of spelling, syntax, and even some grammar, overall it was an interesting though often hard to follow piece. Kudos.
This is put together very well. Enjoyable read. I’ve found myself telling a lot of people more, more, more in a lot of my reviews and with this one being broken down into small sections I thought I would be doing the same. I was wrong. These quick moments are to the point and effective, this story is really a ride. It really reminds me of all those little thoughts, memories, and emotions that come with a relationship. I say don’t change a thing, keep up the good work.
This was beautiful, romantic. Very good imagery. How something can be so sweet and yet so sad at the same time. I wonder what separated these two. The thought that this man was ever at war with the love that he describes seems so impossible, yet we all know how possible that is. There is a quote that I vaguely remember, it was about how there is a thin line between love and hate. This explains why so many weddings end in hateful, punishing divorce; both people seemingly still unable to let the other be. This was a thought provoking piece. Thank you for submitting your work for review, I enjoyed reading it.
I thought that this was pretty good. Overall, it’s a good idea. I really liked the last line, love does seem like a seasonal thing and it comes and goes just like that.
One thing that bothered me was the beginning, where you’re talking about her finding out. What did she find out? Why is she crying? I think some brief mention of that would be good.
Other than that I think if you get that fixed and maybe find ways to expand it without losing the message (I’m not really 100% on that one, just an idea) then this should shape up pretty well.
Good job.
There are many spelling errors that take away points from this piece. There are also many issues with how the sentence structure is. You seem to follow a certain path in writing, and it would be best if you strayed a little. The sentences are too much alike, the wording is too repetive in some places and some paragraphs jump around. You are one minute speaking of Hawaii and the next you are speaking of butterflies and base ball games.
This should be neater.
you had me entranced into the first person point of view as you described the relationship of love and fear intrinsically intertwined i would love to see more from this the descriptive words used while were excellent for building the image i think they could be a bit more imaginative namely “those huge blue eye’s, watching tears tumble and roll down” i could easily see something more to the effect of “the piercing blue pools of your eyes as the tear up and trail down your cheek” or something of that general effect. idk but it was nothing more than a suggestion
Ok, well this one pretty much made me want to barf. There is no discernable story going on. No conflict, no build up, no resolution, no growth, nothing, nada. The characters are staid and rather predictible. And the creamy, overy dramatic prose read like a TV soap opera looks—or worse yet, read like a soap opera actor delivers lines. This train wreck slams head on into cliche with gut wrenching passages such as: ”...my most guarded and valuable thoughts, like a spring flower in full bloom, radiating erotic mind foliage, like an orchid spreading its wings in the wind, and my mind will not let me dismiss it.” This type of writing is just fluff. You’re not saying anything at all. What is a spring flower in full bloom? What is erotic mind foliage? It all seems like filler for the void left by the lack of any meaningful story.
wow.I am not really sure what to say.I mean i can understand what this is,and it is the truth,and you describe it so well. I’m not sure what to say but one thing comes to mind.Keep on writing.
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