Here's a piece of flash fiction!
Please Undo Me
I died on a Friday morning, the day of sorrowful mysteries, those I meditate on and those I do not know and will not understand until they happen to me. It was like everything, like nothing, like being in love with you. This is my body, such as it is, bruises everywhere from what I don’t know. This is my blood, running down my thighs, staining the sheets. How does this pretty dress come off? you ask, and it does, like skin, layer by layer. I say, Will you please undo me, after a long night of wearing something uncomfortable. When the dress hits the floor, the silence enters me just like you have, time and time again. You can do anything you want to while I hold my breath; you can break me. Maybe this is where my story starts.
Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Real art has the capacity to make us nervous." Susan Sontag
Cocktail Hour
Drinking book suggestion: The Camera My Mother Gave Me Susanna Kaysen
Benedictions and Maledictions
Thanks to all my readers for the support and kindness about the new video clips and especially Jason for the technical suggestions! I'm still longing for the days when I wrote on a IBM Selectric so technology is a bit of a challenge, but I'm working on it. Congratulations to the Pistons for a stunning overtime win!
10 comments:
At first reading it sounds a bit teen angst filled mainly becaue of the first line, sounding like a virgin hesiantly giving in, sorrowful that this what she has to do to keep the kid she wants to keep. The blood of a first time hymen piercing, the lover not knowing how to undress the narrator. The clothes coming off like the flaying of skin.
"the silence enters me just like you have, time and time again. You can do anything you want to while I hold my breath; you can break me;"
but at this point it seems to change from one present tense to another present tense, something that first souds lik the loss of virginity is implied is gone and that this has happened before many times but none of it has given the narrator great pleasure, but more like a wild horse needing to be broke for the saddle and once broken, the story begins.
I had to start thinking, this is obviously consentual for the narrator but the because of the seeming passvity of that is this the beginning of what?
And this is where it takes the reader to their own perception of the rest of the story. The begining of acceptence that this is it as far as sex goes or her life in general, just laying back holding the breath until the act is completed and whatever the old man says that's just the way it's going to be?
Or is the beginning for the narrator to not accept this any more, even though broken now is it the beginning of a new calm a determination to be different; have different response to the way ofher life?
Ergo it fulfills it's purpose well as a piece of flash fiction
4.0: you've given me many more than I've given you but here's a start
Peace
mark
Rich in emotion that is down-played. A little surreal. Almost a prose poem. I liked it.
Many overtones of the crucifixtion in this piece, Michelle. I notice that your hands are crossed in the photo. Let us not continue to kill the unborn in our post-Roe v. Wade reality, for murder is the undoing of ourselves.
Now I lay me down to sleep...but I can't...she's been feeding me crystal meth to make me stay up and make coffee for her when she's up all night blogging and making porn movies...somebody please help me....
We're on our way, Grouchie.
Dear, sweet Michelle, how I adore you and your writing. Love this piece. Thank you for your daily transparency. -Jill
Another good read Michelle. Thought the darkness on your first read was the effect you were seeking. Enjoyed it. MW
Oh my. Can someone please call the doctor. Perhaps flash fiction will replace poetry. Hmmm.
Hmmmmm....
It makes me sad for her. She seems so desperate, so lonely. But then maybe there is hope at the end. Something starting? A breaking point, bottom...the potential to climb back out of that dark hole. Maybe she begins to write.
That was beautiful.
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