"I'm sorry, I'm leaving."
suede
Posts: 247
This one is for an assignment for a composition class. I believe all the punctuation is correct. If anyone should see an error, please let me know asap as it is due in about 7 hours. Thanks!
.......
I read her diary, it said, “I’m sorry, I’m leaving.” I had just come home from work to an empty home, not even my dog waiting in the window. As I stood there, surrounded by the emptiness of the house and the emptiness of her heart, I was in a daze of disbelief much like a schoolboy might contain. It is funny that I never realized just how much empty space there was in this small two-bedroom house; the one set back off from the gravel road, the one that she left on. As I looked around, for a sign of something I am still unsure of, I recalled a better day when she said she would stay, that everything would be okay, and that she was happy. I remembered the first time we met; I noticed she was tall, and now I wonder if it hurts any harder because she has a longer way to fall. I slept alone on the floor that night with memories of nothing, really, and I fell asleep dreaming, to the sound of the rain on the windowpane as it spelled out her name. In other words, my life was exactly like the song by The Smiths, “Last night I dreamt that somebody loved me”; but I am fine now, really, it was “just another false alarm.” While that night I came home on was a long time ago, I am certain that house is still empty and that there is no dog in the window; though our ghosts maybe occupy it on a given night. Even though I learned a lot about life that night, I am still here because I know not every woman writes in her diary, “I’m sorry, I’m leaving.”
.......
I read her diary, it said, “I’m sorry, I’m leaving.” I had just come home from work to an empty home, not even my dog waiting in the window. As I stood there, surrounded by the emptiness of the house and the emptiness of her heart, I was in a daze of disbelief much like a schoolboy might contain. It is funny that I never realized just how much empty space there was in this small two-bedroom house; the one set back off from the gravel road, the one that she left on. As I looked around, for a sign of something I am still unsure of, I recalled a better day when she said she would stay, that everything would be okay, and that she was happy. I remembered the first time we met; I noticed she was tall, and now I wonder if it hurts any harder because she has a longer way to fall. I slept alone on the floor that night with memories of nothing, really, and I fell asleep dreaming, to the sound of the rain on the windowpane as it spelled out her name. In other words, my life was exactly like the song by The Smiths, “Last night I dreamt that somebody loved me”; but I am fine now, really, it was “just another false alarm.” While that night I came home on was a long time ago, I am certain that house is still empty and that there is no dog in the window; though our ghosts maybe occupy it on a given night. Even though I learned a lot about life that night, I am still here because I know not every woman writes in her diary, “I’m sorry, I’m leaving.”
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Comments
I especially liked this line:
"I noticed she was tall, and now I wonder if it hurts any harder because she has a longer way to fall."
Just in that one sentence there seems to be so much metaphoric description of the girl, I know her better than if you said, "She was well-off but would soon lose all her comfort." I guess she would fall nonetheless, though she seemed at that moment to be safe from pain. In addition, its rhyme makes it more effective.
That's a cool descriptive technique there, something I'd like to attempt in my future writing.
"As I stood there, surrounded by the emptiness of the house and the emptiness of her heart, I was in a daze of disbelief much like a schoolboy might contain."
My only question about this sentence is: can someone be "in a daze" and "contain a daze" like the characters in this sentence?
originally it said "like a schoolboy might have", but i was suggested to use a stronger verb. when i wrote it i was making the association between disbelief and schoolboy...i think it still makes sense. i'm only worried about my commas, semi-colons, and comma splices; i think i corrected everything.
thanks for the feedback none-the-less
NOTE: I changed it to: "....i was in a daze of disbelief much like a schoolboy might suffer..." and after The Smiths reference, "...but i am fine now, honest." ... no lyrics quoted now...it might not make sense to someone not familiar with the song and doesn't really do anything for that sentence or the paragraph. i got a 20/20 on the rough draft, so i think i'm heading in the right direction...
"the one that she left on"
and
"the night I came home on"
I am not sure what the grammatical rule is here... ending a sentence or a thought in a preposition? I dunno... maybe...
anyway, i'd re-work those two if it were my submission.
i know you asked about punctuation, and that all looks good to me...
"the emptiness surrounded me"... it's a moment in this piece, and, imo, would like expansion... or contraction or something... imo, emptiness does the opposite... we are surrounded in it, with nothing but ourselves, held close by our own fear...
oh, but that's me, isn't it? I hear tell some ppl seek emptiness... not me... no hun un... no way...
squiggles
i also thought twice about "the one that she left on" ...it didn't seem to end smoothly, but the teacher did not say anything about it on the first draft so i left it.
i'm a punctuation/grammar freak, but i always seem to over-use commas and not use semi-colons or periods enough.
thanks for the comment on "the emptiness surrounded me"... though for the sake of the paper i cannot expand any further since we are limited to ten sentences for all of our paragraphs. i like this one being short, but for a future poem, yeah, i might do something with that feeling.
sometimes i get that feeling; that i'm the one seeking emptiness. i hope not.
thinking about it, maybe "the emptiness of A house, rather than "the" house"
kinda detaching something from the house, making it emptier...
orginally I was thinking that emptiness was unable to surround, that it in fact, either leaves quietly, or chokes the shit outta you... does that make sense? ha ha... maybe it's me?
we used to share this joke when ppl would end sentences with prepositions... we'd tag on a noun...
like, ppl would say "where are you at?"
and we'd say... "no... it's where are you at, motherfucker?"
"I never wanted to be a poet.
I just wanted to be a human being.
Anyone who wants to be a poet is out of his mind.
Either you are one or you are not.
Most poets are not poets.
To be a real artist is a unique and valuable asset to this planet."
SAD FOR AN UNBRAVE WORLD
- Jack Micheline
I found him in a search of "poet" on ebay...
Walt Whitman comes to mind.
and from your neck of the woods (sort of) (and going way back), Robert Burns.
Sure, there are poets. There must be poets.
and poems, good and bad.
i know what you mean.
laurel....
peoms....fuk
Well, it takes poets to make poems but it also takes proof readers, editors, compositors, printers, bookbinders, booksellers and readers to construct a poetic text. In a sense, everyone involved in the transmission and reception of a poem is "the poet"; I can't just privilege the creative imagination of the original author. Also, an audio recording of a poem involves a lot of people at progressive stages of its transmission, too.
It is a fact that there are poets who have produced a consistent body of work, but I think the study of Literature in universities certainly in the UK is moving away from presenting course modules on individual writers - which tend to perpetuate the romantic idea of the individual imagination - in favour of a materialist approach to studying broadbased works of a selection of writers in specific periods. By studying a number of contemporaneous texts comparatively and contrastively, we can try to understand the ideological assumptions and conflicts, and socio-economic and material determinants of the forms and themes of cultural production in a given period better than we could if we just looked at one writer.
I feel that if we look at poems whilst seeing them in the contexts of sources and analogues, and contemporary and modern discourses, rather than in the context of fetishising the importance of the Poet as a cultural and historical seer and visionary anomaly, we learn great lessons about how narratives engage with histories, and how history is a narrative.