Sparks
Writing & stories
Something to send instead of saying it
Four short readings of passages that already exist, written so you can forward them to the person you cannot talk to. No form. No message to write. Nothing of yours comes to me. You buy it once, you keep it, and you use it on whoever you need to while I am not in the room. INSIDE 1. For someone who went quiet and cannot explain why — Dickinson, "After great pain, a formal feeling comes." 2. For breaking a silence without begging — Austen, Persuasion, the letter. 3. For the one who thinks it is nearly over — Chekhov, "The Lady with the Dog." 4. For the one who cannot say it without a joke — Keats, "This living hand." Each card is a passage, a short reading of what the passage is actually doing, and the one line to type above it when you send it. CARD 1 IS BELOW, IN FULL, BEFORE YOU PAY ANYTHING. If it does nothing for you, none of the others will. Keep your nine dollars. --- 1. FOR SOMEONE WHO WENT QUIET AND CANNOT EXPLAIN WHY "After great pain, a formal feeling comes — / The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs — / The stiff Heart questions 'was it He, that bore,' / And 'Yesterday, or Centuries before?'" — Emily Dickinson The word doing all the work is "formal." Grief does not arrive looking like grief. It arrives looking like manners: the short reply, the polite nothing, the silence that reads as cold from the outside and as straight-backed endurance from the inside. If you have gone quiet on someone, this is likely what happened. You were waiting for the feeling to name itself before you brought it to them. It does not name itself first. It goes stiff first. This poem says the stillness is not the absence of feeling. It is the first stage of carrying it. Send it and your silence stops reading as a verdict. Type above it: "This is closer to it than anything I could write today." --- One PDF, four cards, delivered to your account within 24 hours of payment. One revision if I got something wrong. Do not send all four. One is a message. Four is a campaign.
$9.00 USD
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