Of Virginia Woolf

"You filled your pockets with stones,
a seed-sower sowing nothing,
nothing to cast away."

That first stanza caught my eye from the preview page and brought me directly here. What a gorgeous way to set both tone and progression of conflict! I was arrested by the first stanza and certainly was not to be disappointed with what remained to be read. I believe that you've captured the spirit of the famous writer (one of my personal favorites) very well with your choices in diction for this piece. The sureness of how you approach things "it must have been cold as you went down", evokes powerful emotion responses, but also leaves space for the decoding of multiple meanings. "must have been cold" as opposed to "could have been cold", now it seems to the reader that you are perhaps speaking of more than just the physical temperature, which adds a new element in connecting them to the subject of the piece. Your use of repetition, the "cold through"s I will call them, brings to mind that sort of repetitive, broken-record thinking that springs out of complete despondency- the horrible cycle of thought that would bring her to commit such an act in the first place. I also appreciated the placement of your inquiry "(Were you beyond gasping...", because it adds a hint of mystery as well and begs the reader to think for themselves how this watery demise may have transpired. It opens up a whole number of unknowns by pin-pointing one- did she gasp? were there tears? was there doubt?

The next stanza plays off of that even more beautifully- "And then the silence". No matter what questions were brought forward by the end of the previous lines, the sense of finality has been established here. My only complaint for this series of lines is the use of the word "startled", which doesn't seem to match up with the weight that holds her stronger than notes, mentioned at the end. How can she be beyond gasping, but not beyond being startled as well- which are manifestations of the same feeling, surprise. At the end of that stanza, and through the use of repetition mentioned earlier, you develop a character beyond such half-way hopes, she seems well and truly beyond caring for life in a way to be surprised by the first handholds of death.

"And
the weight inside would hold you,
stronger than stones."

The device of the alliteration at the end of that particular line was an excellent choice because it ties off the force of the point being expressed powerfully. The heaviness in her is given a physical comparison, which makes it easy to see into the fact that she is bearing something and it is physically, debilitatingly forcing her downward with it's elemental touch. In the final stanza, I loved the imagery so much at the beginning that I was looking for a more uncommon metaphor at the end. The idea is just right, that she is going toward sleep, though we know this to be death, but I feel as "into the soft silt bed" could be more originally put. You obviously have the skills with language to develop that idea further, perhaps in just a single, modified word.

All in all, the piece is absolutely gorgeous and a very worthy homage to the tragedy surrounding a great mind. I will look forward to looking through your gallery to find more of your excellent skill and hope that everyone else does as well!