06-13-2015, 05:43 AM
I too loved the ending! Unexpected, but suits the range of emotions in a breakup. The punch at the end also keeps it from waxing a bit too pathetic.
I'm not as experienced as Todd, but I have a thought to share on the idea of "suffocating" in the first stanza. Suffocating usually conjures images of something pressing on someone to cut off air supply (choking, drowning, pillow over the face, etc.), but suffocating is really the absence of oxygen and I think absence is the theme of that stanza.
If something is hollow the "stuff" that usually goes inside is absent; you said there was sunshine but now it's absent, and an empty belly is a kind of absence. So if you'd like to keep the suffocating idea, maybe recast it as no oxygen in your lungs/veins/blood/nostrils, or maybe there's simply no air to breath.
I'm not as experienced as Todd, but I have a thought to share on the idea of "suffocating" in the first stanza. Suffocating usually conjures images of something pressing on someone to cut off air supply (choking, drowning, pillow over the face, etc.), but suffocating is really the absence of oxygen and I think absence is the theme of that stanza.
If something is hollow the "stuff" that usually goes inside is absent; you said there was sunshine but now it's absent, and an empty belly is a kind of absence. So if you'd like to keep the suffocating idea, maybe recast it as no oxygen in your lungs/veins/blood/nostrils, or maybe there's simply no air to breath.