The voices in my head. The voices in my world. The voices trying to get there. How can I hear the difference between the sound waves. They wash through my brain, eroding what I knew. How can I see through the waves?
So many currents, pulling me apart, pounding on my mind, till I fall to pebbles. No foundation. No granite base. Just sand washing with the water, waves upon waves upon waves upon me. And who am I? What defines me? The voice in my mind, the voice in my family, the voice in my friends, the voice in my school, they build to the rushing roar, drown thought in their glistening depths, dissolve me in their monotone diversity.
I sink.
And I rise.
What breaks the surface, the mirrored veil keeping me under the waves? What glorious silence breaks the screams and wraps me in its peace? What grounds me, and from this firm foundation lifts me above the waters, the whispering voices, above myself? Or who?
Help requested-
ReplyDelete1)Did you understand the mixed metaphors of voices being sound waves being water wave?
2) Should I be more definite in the end, or is the ending question effective?
3) What should I expand on, to make it longer? The lifting foundation? The voices?
Thanks in advance for your potential advice!
I like this, Eva--another one of your cross-over pieces that seems like it could be part short essay, part poetry. What do you think of it as? To respond to your questions, I got the sound waves and water waves imagery, although I think you could make the structure--and the content--stronger if you explored ONLY sound waves in the first paragraph, then ONLY water waves in the second, and then in the last paragraph, you combined them, as you do, in your questions pointing to the future. This is already your rough structure, but I think you could be more intentional about it--you could craft these metaphors a bit more.
ReplyDeleteAs for the ending, I like leaving it as a series of questions. A short image/poem is a fairly small stage on which to introduce and then resolve a question of identity vs. community. However, I think you could also do more to clarify the conflict and the terms of the conflict. Is it that you can't hear your own, authentic, individual voice among all of the other voices clamoring in your ears? Do you doubt that there IS a firm foundation of authentic self that would remain after the waves push the sand back and forth? I think that's the conflict that you'd exploring here, but sometimes the abstractions made it a little difficult. Again, make every word count, and make sure that you are communicating a very clear feeling/conflict/dilemma--if it's muddy in your mind, it will be muddier to your reader, and it means that you need more revision.