July 15th, 2017 at 09:35am
This was really heartbreaking. I can't ever imagine having to explain something like cancer to my parents, never mind sibling of that age, so the way that you described this was absolutely awful (but in a good way!) to read. Even though the language is simple and the description is minimal, you still tell an incredible tale and pack all of these emotions into the small amount of words you have here. It's absolutely beautiful, but heartbreaking at the same time.
The last line though. There's so much held in that one last line and it really carries a punch. Absolutely incredible way to end this. Your description is spot-on and this was such a beautiful, yet sad piece. Amazing job!
Wow, this actually messed me up a lot. It’s so damn heartbreaking and it’s only a little over 200 words. There’s so much emotion and pain packed into this that it’s overwhelming. I can’t imagine being in that situation at all. I can’t picture having to sit my sister down and explain cancer. And the last line packs such a brutal punch. It was such a monumental way to end such a powerfully emotional drabble.
I think what I liked most about this was the ambiguity of it. You don’t actually specify who has cancer. It might just be a trick of my mind and not something you did on purpose because I think everyone’s first assumption would be that it’s the narrator with cancer. But there’s also this kind of vagueness about it where, sure, it could be the narrator but it could also be the mother or the absent father or even the narrator’s sister, in a way. You don’t actually specify who it is because the narrator never says “I have cancer” or implies with absolute clarity who they’re talking about. I kind of don’t think that you meant for it to be like that, but I still like it.
I really, really loved the simplicity of your writing because it pushes the focus onto the emotions of the scene rather than the descriptions and I loved that so much. So overall, this was fantastic.