I doubt either of them saw it coming, I'm sure at the beginning it seemed alright. Good men don't plan to ruin a young girl's innocence, good girls don't plan to spend their first night with a married man. Or at least I hope they don't. Maybe they knew all along. Who knows?
But what is not fair to me is a mother with four children now to be carried alone. A husband who loved two women too much and not enough. [And who fell from grace and ended up alone, deservedly perhaps, because of it.] What's not fair is that a young girl is lying and because of her lies sides are taken. Silent lines are drawn. Prejudices set in and the futures of many are shifted due to the war that is now born from deception.
What is not fair is that sin entered the world and made things complicated. But perhaps the complicated part is that I don't expect it. Perhaps the complicated part is that I think too much of people, and when these things happen I wonder what the terms "good people" or "Christian" even mean.
But I know that's just bitterness and I shouldn't allow it. It's just that bitterness is an easy and welcome bed to lie in for a time.
I guess the problem is that the whole situation makes me a little sick, and it seems foolish to take sides in a war that honest to heaven will never have a victor. Because truth be told Someone already won. The Serpent's hiss became a song and two people chose to dance.
And all I can do is hope that truth will be told someday to the people that it would make a difference to. That something good will be gleaned from the ashes - even though that very thought seems ludicrous to me at the moment. And all I can do is hope that healing can find people even if they've lied themselves into holes so deep, revolting, and treacherous that I can't even fathom the climb it would take to get out.
But I guess... all I can do is hope.
This really isn't a piece I should comment on, and I don't think it's a piece where you really expect a comment. I can read between the lines and guess the story. And I know that if you had wanted to do the thing English teachers always want ("Add specific details!"), you are more than capable of doing so.
ReplyDeleteBut, even though this is bitter venting, you're still way too much of a writer to not have added some grace notes, way too much of a writer not to have made it more than bitter venting. For example:
* "She threw him a wink, he smiled back and together they danced to the beginning of the end." (A lovely sentence describing something awful, and the contrast between the prose and the act points up the horror of the act.)
* "Good men don't plan to ruin a young girl's innocence, good girls don't plan to spend their first night with a married man." (Economical, no wasted words or emotion; you give it, we get it.)
* "foolish to take sides in a war that...will never have a victor." (Interesting thought, and again very economical.)
* "The Serpent's hiss became a song and two people chose to dance." (Second mention of a dance, forcing us to think of a dance that is both erotic and destructive--I'm thinking of all the medieval 'dance of death' art. And of course, there's only one way to escape the dance of death, and it does not sound as if these people are on that way at all right now. But you can hope.)
* "lied themselves into holes so deep, revolting, and treacherous " (Nailing down the lid on this with three hammering adjectives.)
As a writer it's always great when you do something on purpose and then have people notice that you're doing it on purpose and appreciate it! Your comment on the three adjectives made me smile inwardly (there was only one in my first draft and I added two more after sleeping on the piece for added depth).
ReplyDeleteAs always, I do appreciate your comments. Funny that it made you think of the medieval dance of death art - that specifically wasn't in my head when I was writing this piece, but the novel I'm working on at the moment is set in a medieval time and sometimes those strings have a way of attaching on their own... writing is a funny art.