The Lyme Grove

[ellajam]

Hi, an interesting read. First, a note on punctuation. You start, stop, start. If you can make this work without you could edit it that way, but IMO it would be easier for writer and reader to just complete what you started. I've put some notes below, if you want more in depth critique this could be moved to the Mild workshop.

I am finding this one tricky. I want to tell a personal story which is then making it hard for me to be effective in self-editing. It may be that it just does not work, so any thoughts and feedback would be very useful at this point. Thanks!


The Lyme Grove

"Lock me up", her eyes
Held out wrists upturned A bumpy start, I thought "offer" might work instead of "held out" but held out has nice alternate meanings, it just didn't read well for me.
As my arms built a prison
That would never hold her.
With faces pressed to bars
In a gate set in stone;
The perimeter of our world
Of thirty metres square. These four lines are sentence fragments, I think you could make it read more smoothly.

Here is far as we can go.

Had she asked, I'd have lied
It was honour that stopped
Us unpicking locks, vulnerable
To trespass and escape from within
Yet four hands never rose
To rattle the cage and dare the bolt
To wriggle free
So hinges might groan in condonance.
I like these last three lines, especially dare the bolt.

Behind us voices
Teased tiny promises
Singing lies of summer
That might yet last
For a moment we clutched These 2 lines shift around but end up nowhere for me.
But blood once-fired quickly cools
Until only gooseflesh
And clock hands point skyward
Strong strophe, especially the last three lines with their implication of what does not rise.

So the breakout failed I thought you didn't break out, I'm missing something.
And we died at the gate
Avoiding the gaze
Of a blind horizon.
With friendship uncertain
On paths not walked before us These two lines are clunky.
Our inaction cultured
A creeping infection. Love these two.

Without admitting
Defeat we retreated
A slow march, conjuring
From our mouths masks
Of rationality; each ensuring
The other was watertight
While denying the sink-
Holes opening in our chests.
While I like the breaks here I'm unsure what you gain by dividing sinkholes. I guess the watertight and sink, but meh.

We returned home to tame fires
Burning in our hearths
And those who love us simply.
Comfort. Survival. No blaze
Like the summer we sought
And froze upon finding
For the fall comes quickly in those woods
And frost bites harder than any we've known.
"this" in front of frost might be nice.

Thanks for the read. I think you might be able to trim it down so it's not quite so difficult to get through but punctuation or a few well placed edits might do the trick. Good luck (and hard work) with it.