17- Fix You
When you try your best, but you don’t succeed
When you get what you want, but not what you need
When you feel so tired, but you can’t sleep
Stuck in reverse
I first met you in a church when I was seventeen years old. You were forced to go, I was the daughter of the pastor. You wore a pair of worn out jeans and a plain t-shirt; I was all dolled up, like one of those porcelain dolls that little girls receive on Christmas. You sat there alone with your head down, as if you were trying to hide away from the glory of this pretentious world. I looked at you from afar, smiling as usual. I didn’t know how to approach you, so I started to sing. I sang so loudly that I droned out the rest of the chorus, and everyone stared at me in awe. I didn’t care about what others thought of me; I just wanted you to notice my existence. You did. As I sang the words of God, you stood up and left the room. I kept on singing, but I was no longer smiling. I felt an immense rush of pain shooting from my heart; I think I was bleeding inside. I had never seen anyone who looked so sad. Why were you so sad?
And the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can’t replace
When you love someone, but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?
I ran off from the stage and chased after you. I didn’t know where you went, so I looked everywhere, until I found you sitting alone by the entrance. You looked at me like the way a little child who hadn’t see his mom for a long time, and took me into your arms. You clinched onto me as if I was your last lifeline, and I felt the streams of tears wetting the top of my shoulder. I knew you needed someone to love; even though, you weren’t capable of loving. I knew the sudden love that I developed for you would end up tearing me apart, but I was too sad to let go of such a wounded soul. I knew I had to save you like the way Jesus saved his people; I didn’t mind dying for you.
18- Yellow
Look at the stars,
Look how they shine for you,
And everything you do,
Yeah, they were all yellow.
I came along,
I wrote a song for you,
And all the things you do,
And it was called “Yellow”.
I saw you smile for the first time when I was eighteen years old. Your smile was innocent, like the smile of a little puppy. Your eyes were bright, so bright that it reminded me of the way the Cross looked hanging from the altar. You never went back to the church, but you kept on coming to see me. You told me that you had lost all faith in God, because he was never there for you when you needed him. He wasn’t there when your mother got ran over by a car, he wasn’t there when you were sent from one relative to another, like the way an old shirt gets handed down from one person to another, and he wasn’t there for you when your drunken uncle took you and beat you everyday. You smiled as you told me everything, as if all the misfortune belonged to someone else. You held tightly unto me, and told me to sing you a song. I did, the one that I wrote especially for you.
Your skin,
Oh yeah your skin and bones,
Turn into something beautiful,
And you know,
For you I’d bleed myself dry,
For you I’d bleed myself dry.
I knew there was no turning back. My heart had been sewn with yours, and we’ve become one like the way God created a woman from a man’s ribcage. I absorbed every bit of your wildness, your loveliness, and your loneliness. Sometimes your loneliness could be overbearing, making me sad myself. Yet, I always smiled in front of you, even when I was crying inside. I stopped seeing my friends because I didn’t want you to feel like I was abandoning you. I skipped Christmas with my family, so that you wouldn’t have to spend it alone. I wanted to do all the things I could to make you experience the least bit of love and joy in this world. I was nailing myself to the cross.
19- What If
What if there was no lie
Nothing wrong, nothing right
What if there was no time
And no reason, or rhyme
What if you should decide
That you don’t want me there by your side
That you don’t want me there in your life
Between the years of eighteen and nineteen, I think I cried more times than my entire existence. I stopped talking to my parents because they wouldn’t approve of you. My father said that the son of an ex-convict should not be part of our family, and my mother cried every night because she felt like she had lost her only daughter. Everyone around me considered me as a miracle child because I was born premature and almost went through a heart transplant at the age of three. I was always very weak as a child, and all of my family members treated me like a precious jewel. I always got what I wanted, and never understood the meaning of sadness. My father said that it was a sin to be sad under God’s love and glory. I had never doubted that, even when I met you. I always thought that if I had just tried a little harder, maybe you could see the joy that the world offered. However, I was wrong. Your heart had been stabbed too many times, to a point where only God could save you. I had lost.
Every step that you take
Could be your biggest mistake
It could bend or it could break
That’s the risk that you take
You finally left me and disappeared into the lonely world. You disappeared as swiftly as you had appeared in my life. I cried night and day, until my eyes became blurry. I locked myself in my room and blamed myself for not loving you enough, for making you run away once again. But I tried, and died during the process. I had already given up my entire happiness; there is nothing else that I could possibly give. Maybe there was another girl somewhere in the world waiting for you to discover, waiting for you to love, and waiting for you to forget your wounds. However, that girl was not me. My eyes remained blurry for days, I thought I was going blind; yet, I regained my sight after the seventh day, and decided to forget about you after that.
20- The Scientist
Come up to meet you, tell you I’m sorry
You don’t know how lovely you are
I had to find you, tell you I need you
Tell you I set you apart
Tell me your secrets, and ask me your questions
Oh let’s go back to the start
Running in circles, coming up tails
Heads on a science apart
Nobody said it was easy
It’s such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard
Oh, take me back to the start.
Dear Annabel,
If I were to pick a favorite number, it would have to be 20. Twenty was when I first met you. I was sitting hopelessly in the middle of the crowded church, looking at all the pretentious faces around me. I finally couldn’t take it anymore, and put my head down to drone out the noise. As each sound was slowly fading out of my head, I suddenly heard the most wonderful voice in my life, reminding me of the way my mother used to sing to me as a child. I didn’t know what to do because all of the memories that I tried to get rid of suddenly came back to me. I had to leave, but I didn’t want to leave you. I went outside hoping that I could catch a glimpse of you later on; but, to my surprise, you actually came out. When I saw you up close, I thought I saw my mother through your eyes. I held onto you like a little child, afraid that you might go away. I knew that I had been attached to you from the start.
I’ve never told you this, but the time that I spent with you was the happiest of my life. Yet, it haunted me just as much. The sight of you somehow brought back all of my past memories, as if someone was picking at an almost-healed scab. Your happiness, your loveliness, and everything about you reminded me of everything that I was not. I couldn’t stand myself corrupting an innocent soul like yours, since I had too much sadness inside of me. In a way, you reminded me of a saint, always sacrificing yourself for the sake of others. I knew your family had problems with me and you stopped talking to them after seeing me. You didn’t have to hide all of your sadness away; the silence of your cry haunted me even more. Guilt and helplessness started building inside of me, and I couldn’t stand watching you deteriorate right before my eyes. I had to leave. I had to act cold towards you; otherwise I couldn’t bear leaving you behind. Annabel, I am so sorry for bringing you so much pain into your life. Even though a year had passed, I had never stopped thinking about you. I don’t have much time left because I finally found a way to chastise my soul, I will go see God. Thank you for being there for me when I most needed it, and thank you for loving me when everyone had forsook me. If I could choose, I don’t wish to come back to earth again; but, if I must, I would implore God to allow me to meet you earlier, so that I could save the best of me for you. Please forget about me. Everything had been a wonderful dream, but now it’s time to wake up. I’m sure when I wake up everything will start all over again; I am going back to the start.
For my final essay, I decided to take some risk and do a diary/letter type of hybrid essay combining song lyrics. I wanted to write about the growing process of two young people, who despite of their clear differences, were once joined by love. I wanted to talk about how much an individual can affect another individual, since one of my close friends had a great influence in my life. All of the song lyrics are by “Coldplay,” since my friend first introduced them to me, and I happened to love all of the words from their songs. I chose two stanzas of lyrics from each song, and combined them with two paragraph of the girl’s thoughts. The lyrics should somewhat reflect how she felt at the different stages of her life. However, the last one (20-The Scientist) is actually came from the boy’s perspective. I really combined a whole lot of different elements into this one, even religion. Hopefully, it will work.
My draft is a lot different than what I originally planned to do. However, I thought it would be more fun doing something that I haven’t done before. At the same, I felt like I could relate to the girl in a way, since I was really sad when my friend left for China after graduating from college. Even though the relationship I had with my friend was more of a companionship than a relationship, it still had a pretty big effect on me. Also, I felt that songs by “Coldplay” have a certain type of sadness to it, which is good for my theme. The number in from the title of the lyric represents the age of the character. As the girl matures and gets older, her thoughts also began to change. At the end, we finally get a chance to hear what the boy has to say.
At this point, I am pretty optimistic about my draft. I hope that it would not be too confusing or hard to understand. I think there is definitely a lot of room for corrections, but I want to see how others think of it first before I make any sudden changes. Hopefully, people would find this piece to be enjoyable and somewhat informative (one way or another).
Bea,
I couldn’t believe this was fictional! I really thought you were the girl in this! Anyway, I really like how you intertwined the Christian faith/God with a boy-meets-girl story. It’s something I haven’t seen or read before. Your choice of the Coldplay lyrics blended well with the scenes.
My favorite line was, “I absorbed every bit of your wildness, your loveliness, and your loneliness.” It’s well structured, and I like the metaphor behind it. I also really like the rhythm that flows through that sentence. It’s very romantic, which I think is the mood of this piece.
I noticed that you’re very descriptive in your writing, and you use a lot of similes and metaphors. Why don’t you to cut them a bit shorter or limit them? For example, when you’re stating a simile, try to cut “like the way a little child” to “like a little child.” For the metaphors, there was the line, “My heart had been sewn with yours, and we’ve become one like the way God created a woman from a man’s ribcage.” Here you have a metaphor, a simile, and a change in tenses (from “had” to “we’ve”). Try to keep just one tense. I also think the sentence could do with just metaphors by removing “like.” By shortening and simplifying a bit, the metaphors and the similes can be more effective.
Overall, I really like your approach of intertwining religion and Coldplay lyrics into a romantic story.
Roxanne
Bea,
Wait, what?! This isn’t you? I seriously thought that this was about you! You write with such passion, this is convincing.
I really liked it. I felt the song lyrics were a great choic –you’re right about the tone Coldplay sets. There seems to be incredible sadness here. I felt that the relationship between these two teenagers grew very naturally. I like the way you inserted the background info about the boy. It didn’t interrupt the flow of the writing at all.
My favorite line is, “I was nailing myself to the cross.” Whoa. It’s so short, to the point, and powerful. It goes really well with the whole religious/martyr-for-love theme.
I wonder if you could explain the age thing to the reader somehow. It might add something to the experience of reading if the reader knows what those numbers are. I got that the last part was a letter from the boy, but I missed that The Scientist was his song. In fact, I thought that the girl had given up religion to move on to science because of the boy.
Great writing!
Matt Graves
Dear Bea,
I really liked this piece and I can’t believe that the girl wasn’t you! This is a really moving love story and I think that the Coldplay lyrics work well with your theme of true love that just wasn’t meant to be. My favorite line was “My eyes remained blurry for days, I thought I was going blind; yet, I regained my sight after the seventh day, and decided to forget about you after that.” It shows just how deeply she had loved him, how hurt she was by his departure and it ties back to the religious aspect of your lyric essay. Just like Matt noted above, I was kind of confused by your choice of words in “20-The scientist.” Your piece had revolved a lot around religion, and when I think of science, I think of evolution and such oppositions to your theme of religion. So I thought that that meant the boy would never come to believe in God (which relates to the parts where he ran out of the church, never went back, and how he said he didn’t believe in God because he had been hurt too often.) But then in the later paragraph, in his letter to Annabel, he says “I don’t have much time left because I finally found a way to chastise my soul, I will go see God.” Does he believe in God now? Was he always religious (perhaps I just didn’t catch on) and also, is the boy dieing? Overall, I really liked this piece. It’s dreamy, romantic and the sadness that it conveys makes it all the more stronger. Keep up the great work!
Sincerely,
Catherine C.
Hi Bea,
I think it’s understandable that all your peers were surprised to hear that the girl isn’t you. First, because the writing is very personal and thus seems like it is a real experience. And second because the class is an essay-writing class, not a fiction class, and we’ve been working with our own real stories. Of course, we’ve also been talking about using style tools–developing character, story, etc–that are related to fiction writing. I think that maybe what you’ve done here is take something that is a real story and fictionalize it, so there are many elements of this that are your story. Is that true?
So, as fiction, it’s hard for me to comment. Let’s approach it as an essay, and maybe in revision you can look at it that way, and make it an essay about your own experience, an experience of friendship that you reference in your essay. Any personal non-fiction essay that is based on our own lives is only BASED on our lives. You are free to elaborate. But it should begin with you–with your actual story shaped by your real memories.
I think the form is unique; it draws form Soundtrack by bringing in music to the story. But is it just a style device, or does it have more substance and meaning in the story. That is, are the songs or Coldplay more relevant than just a vehicle for breaking apart the sections? You don’t want it to seem gratuitous. And indeed, your cover letter suggests that Coldplay does have a certain relevance to you; your friend (the friend this story is based on?) introduced you to the band. Giving some insight into this history in your essay–somehow, somewhere–would help reveal the relevance of the form and keep it form becoming just a clever frame for your essay, which it is not. It’s more than that.
I like how the first part of the piece is written in second person, directly addressing the boy. IT’s got a yearning earnest quality that works–that, as your readers have noted, sounds very genuine and real. The voice of the letter is less authentic-sounding to me. I’d love to see you try to write the boy’s version of the story in third person (He left the church when she started to sing). So it would be sort of an omniscient narrator, but a limited omniscient narrator who’s more keyed in to and represents the boy’s perspective. This leap from second to third person could create good texture in your story, and may help prevent you from falling in to a certain flat, letter form of all telling, no showing. In third person, you could narrate the scenes of the essay as the boy saw them. Right now, the letter is a lot of telling and ends your piece less powerfully than other options might end it.
The linkage of religion, church, and love is very evocative here. You use several similes (e.g. I knew I had to save you like the way Jesus saved his people andwe’ve become one like the way God created a woman from a man’s ribcage) to establish the parallels. You might try less direct comparisons, without using like or as. That is paint an image that captures what you’re saying without directly telling the reader, my feelings were LIKE this or that. That way, you’re suggesting symbols or parallels without spelling it out quite so much. See if it has a more evocative effect to write this way.
Sometimes you use a word, often a verb, that doesn’t seem quite right; it’s close, but not the one I think you’re looking for. I think you mean drowned out, not droned out, and he clung to you, not clinched. SInce verbs are so important to paint a picture and provide movement and vitality to your writing, be sure to proofread carefully for your verbs and make sure you’re using exactly the right one–the best one–to capture the emotion you’re going for.