Simple Sadness ~ Why Readers Appreciate a Simply Sad Tale

      I've always wanted to write a story about a young woman who had a late night dinner with Christ. A simple tale about child love and adult regret. But time has impaired me, so I intend to give it away as an example to a greater truth. Who knows, one day another may finish it for me.

       The tale goes like this. A long time ago when America was younger, a time as C.S. Lewis described as having the most mouth watering candy around. A time where everything was a bit more beautiful because everything was a bit more central. A time Prayer was still in school and the farm-houses were still found in the rolling grasslands, but still a time not entirely worth describing because it would leave the reader too depressed to finish the story.

       In this most common setting we find an even more common situation - a most unpleasant woman. She wore dresses that were too small and shoes that were too big. Her skin was too pale, even for distress, and her eyes wore a teary shroud. But everyone knew her for her golden hair. This was perhaps the only bright and most decent thing about her.

      She would spend her days having tea with her self and spend nights cutting the memories from her arms. She loved her parents, and her love was killing her.

       The night came where she slipped a note beneath her aunt's and uncle's door, swept down the stairs, out across the lawn, to sit at a table and wish the moon and the stars farewell. Smiling to herself, she knew she would seem them again. The table was prepped, the knife glinted in her hand. But death has a way to give a last word.

      She was startled by the sound of crunching leaves. And before I describe anything more, I must say the conversation that passed between them is the only privacy allowed to my story. However, there is something I would like to share. Just before I drew the curtains on this shadowy tale, something was said. Something simple.

      He saw here wrists. Each furrow strummed to the harmony of sorrow and pain. Each rivet burrowed to the cries of the heart.

       "I just want it to stop." her eyes beginning to swell, " just for it to stop."

       And the man reached forward, laying out both of his arms, "So do I." She saw the holes and began to cry."

      Writing is a delicate matter. If you stress sadness, you only stress the readers. The truth is sad enough, there's no reason to tell anyone why it's sad.