With just a little way to go.
Hi Dele. Complex, dark, moving. I love the narration aspect. It starts with the almost "jolly" Song of Roland approach (an 8th century tale of bravery and suffering), that masks, like the "Song", the true brutal nature of the subject matter.
Memory Lane - almost dreamlike, but such a dark undercurrent. Almost an Eliot, "skull beneath the skin" aspect, capturing fetidness, mortality, but wonderful imagery.
and drain that black blood all away"
Thank you for your comments, I'll admit 'recuperation' is unfinished, and was untitled when I posted it, but the strands got muddled and cut somewhere and I could only recover snatches. I'll work on it tomorrow, but it's about the cyclical nature of depression and how the sufferer is often at loggerheads with their nearest and dearest,'of me' coincidental to or during episodes of illness, and how all the emotional healing in between bouts gets undone, 'pricks sutures'and how within the dark suffocation of despair there is another self trying to escape this living death.
And yes, I did use the trite imagery of popular love songs for the first part of Ten Strokes, I'm glad the contrast worked for you. I thought it suited the theme.