Skeleton On The Sea Floor -- revision

[Achebe]

Her  bones appeared one day, fused to the seabed,
as one clinically depressed merges with their mattress
or decomposes into couch cushions, 
ribs reaching up in wonderment. The weight 
of the water fell over her face like a blanket as she slept, 
convincing her mind to keep dreaming 
and lungs to surrender.

She just appeared there one day,
a woman of thirty-five, feet strapped
into sensible heels, and settled
behind a desk with a picture of a husband and two kids,
unable to breathe.

Her skeleton just appeared there one day, fused to the seabed, as one clinically depressed merges with their mattress or decomposes into couch cushions. Half her bones already lay concealed in the silt, like puzzle pieces disappear down the sides of a chair or underneath a love seat. Her breastbone shattered from the ocean's pressure, leaving her ribs to reach up in wonderment at its absence. The weight of the water fell over her face like a thick blanket as she slept, convincing her mind to keep dreaming and her lungs to surrender. She just appeared there one day, a woman of thirty-five, feet strapped into sensible brown heels, and settled behind a desk with a picture of a husband and two kids, unable to breathe.

It just appeared there one day, fused to the seabed
as one clinically depressed merges with their mattress
or decomposes into couch cushions. Weight fell
like a thick blanket over their face as they slept,
convincing the mind to keep dreaming and the lungs to surrender.
It just appeared there one day, like a woman
of thirty-five suddenly seeing her feet wearing sensible heels,
sitting behind a desk with a picture of a husband and two kids,
unable to breathe.

?

>< :*

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I think this edit does a lot to clarify your meaning. Breaking into two stanzas makes it easier to create the parallels required to make the poem work.

Thanks for coming back to it, Deathstar. I agree about the stanza break.

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I like it.  but I would drop the capitalization. it tends to distract.

also there is a mixed metaphor of someone underwater with someone on a couch/mattress. maybe a line to link the two metaphors?

I love this line: "Half her bones already lay concealed in the silt, 

like puzzle pieces disappear down the sides of a chair" - very haunting

maybe add another line: tumbling like shells into the deep abyss (I know that's a bit cliche, but just an idea).

Matthew

Welcome to the site, Matthew! Thanks for the read and for offering up some ideas. It's been pared back to the basics for now so that I can get the voice back under control, and then I'll see about adding other elements in. Thanks for letting me know what you liked and didn't like about it, that's helpful.

Reinstate the original. It had a vitality that the edits don't.
It's impossible to edit poetry beyond a point (another blanket statement that no one will agree with...)

[Lizzie]

Although thematically the topic is a bit overdone, your perception of it adds a freshness to it. S2 is excellent, I think that S1 could be chopped down some as it is a bit verbose and repetitive, making it seem a bit forced. As this is in mild I'll leave it at that.

Best,

dale

Hi Dale, good to see you

Which topic? Everyone has a different idea of what the poem's about, so I'm just curious. Yeah, I agree that it needs to be pruned back for now. I was adding in descriptive elements about the skeleton to tie that bit in, but I probably swung a little too far in the other direction. Yeah, it was a little forced, so I'm not surprised that it sounded that way, unfortunately. Thanks for reading and weighing in.

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Reinstate the original. It had a vitality that the edits don't.
It's impossible to edit poetry beyond a point (another blanket statement that no one will agree with...)

You don't like your own ideas for a re-write???

Is it that you don't like identifying the skeleton as being the woman? Yeah, it can go back to being Jane Doe at the bottom of the ocean, I have no problem with that, but there were still structural problems in the middle that needed correction. Right?

When I initially wrote it, I envisioned the blanket bit in the middle being more of an equal player, so that there would be three images that would all be examples of something that's been there all along seeming to suddenly appear. I have a hate relationship with my comforter at night, it's always creeping up over my face, and I have to swat it away several times a night, and I was hoping to be able to make that work as some kind of a gradual suffocation image, but I can't seem to get the wording quite right. Plus, I'm not sure that this particular blanket problem is universal.

So, I decided that I could try a different notion to bring some cohesiveness, that notion being the personification of the skeleton as the woman. However, I'm not married to that idea, and I debate it endlessly with myself at all strange hours.

[Achebe]

You don't like your own ideas for a re-write??? 

They looked good at the time, but not now

[Lizzie]

You don't like your own ideas for a re-write??? 

They looked good at the time, but not now

Funny I liked it
I cut out the bit about the ribs, because I don't know if I'm going to cut that bit out entirely or what. I'm also still on the fence about the puzzle piece image.

[Todd]

Moved to Serious per the OP request. Comments going forward should reflect this change/admin