You should definitely keep working on it. And most of the time the best statements one makes is something subconscious, either in the mind of the author or the reader.
Short Story / The Dreams You Kept
When you were younger, you used to walk around with that pocketful of dreams, all shiny and new, and you’d play with them as you walked. You held each one in your hand and felt it, felt all of it and held it until it was hot before you’d drop it back in your pocket and let it rest, nice and warm and alive.
This was what you loved to do, until one day you reached in and they were gone, every last one, and you reached deeper and you found a hole, just big enough for them all to slip out, one by one, until you had nothing left.
So you retraced your steps and searched, you searched frantically for your lost dreams and found them,one by one, along the dirty path you had walked for the last few years. Many had been broken by the fall or had been stepped on by others and they lay cracked and dirty, so you swept them aside and moved on. Still others you saw with different eyes, and now looked bad or useless or unappealing. You broke them yourself and kicked them off the path so nobody could come by and find them and say “This was his dream.”
But many others were still intact and still as beautiful as when they had fallen, and you gathered them up but there were too many to carry with no pockets; you were sad, but you sorted through them and took just a few that you could carry in one hand and keep warm for the rest of your life.
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saveusjeebus reviewed Version 2 -
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I liked it, and i generally dont really enjoy things written in second person. i think the ending was nicely abrupt and appropriately bittersweet. this kind of seems like flash fiction to me, something that might not be able to find its way into a lot of short story collections. just something to keep in mind
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Jennifina reviewed Version 1 -
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This was beautiful,breathtaking. I loved the personification of dreams in my pocket, giving them warmth, it reminded me of The Giving Tree in a way. (I’m a kindergarten teacher, and that’s one of my favorites, for the same reasons!)
I found this to be melancholy but encouraging at the same time. A hard combination, but you did it masterfully.
September 03, 2006
Deleted User
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This story probably would have made a better poem. The way you start the first three paragraphs with “you” instead of “he,” or “she” makes the reader identify better. It does have potential. But like I said before, as a poem.
Mayday29 reviewed Version 1 -
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I really enjoyed the story. It spoke of dreams we want to hold onto and yet sometimes we let our dreams get away from us. The sorting thru of your dreams is understandably the times in our lives we reevaluate what is important to us and make decisions to stay on a path or go in a different direction. Couldn’t have said it better!
RogerFlint reviewed Version 1 -
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wow. that was really good. it felt like a cross between a short story and a poem. good work. i felt like this could apply to anyone and sure applied to me
unspoken_lullaby reviewed Version 1 -
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This is a great piece. I love the metaphors you used. It makes me think of ignorance is bliss.. when you’re young, everything is a possability, and as you get older you either forget about certain dreams you have or realize that they can’t ever happen.
I especially like the last paragraph in this. Once you see all the dreams you had and lost, and all the ones you were forced to leave behind, you can always look back and smile at the memory of them.
all in all, very good piece of work.
January 18, 2006
Deleted User
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I enjoyed this – to think that when you’re young you have so many dreams, happy and thriving and just waiting for you there in the future, but unless you actually reach for them instead of just looking at them, they’ll fade away. I particularly liked this imagery:
“You broke them yourself and kicked them off the path so nobody could come by and find them and say ‘This was his dream.’”
The only thing this little story lacked was a little substance…I think going into further detail about what his dreams might have been, what he did more specifically to lose them might make this even more appealling and perhaps even cause another reader to connect to this story.
Nice work.
January 12, 2006
Deleted User
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A good short piece, straight and to the point. Without much effort the author has created an image in my mind of the “dreams” as physical objects.
I especially enjoyed the idea of reexaminating one’s own wants and desires throughout life and realizing one of the casualties of age is not seeing the importance of dreams of the past, with the real trouble of not being able to understand whether it was one’s younger self that was wrong, or if the older self is too jaded or just incapable of appreciating it.
This piece might work better with some expansion. Although it is completely intact by itself, some augmentation of place and character would go well with it.
kirby reviewed Version 1 -
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this is a really cool idea, especially the dreams as little rocks in one’s pocket.
i’d love to see some expansion on this. i could see this as a fairy tale perhaps, but not necessarily something light like mother goose, it could be something more serious like how gabriel marquez told 1000 years of solitude in a fairy-tale like manner.
good stuff though.
TakeARisk reviewed Version 1 -
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I think you have touched on something that many if not most of us have experienced. Losing our dreams or setting them aside. I really like the way you have used second person here to personlize the text to the reader. That is so rarely done well. I just really like this piece, thank you.
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