my first attempt to stretch the origin poem differently was to tell the same story of the rose, but told by a different perspective: a child. while the poem is just a momentous glimpse into how the rose has been feeling, i initially envisioned this experiment to provide a bigger story. this vignette was to be three parts, however what is shown above is just part One, “we go outside.”

 

part One is the place where readers learn how the flower (in the origin piece) is picked and introduced into this child’s life. the reader is exposed to this child’s thoughts and experiences indoors and in the world. her accidental fall, instinctive clutch to the rose, and prick of the thorn are moments where she may first experience pain while being introduced to this flower. this may leave the girl closed off from enjoying the rose in the first place.

 

i imagine part Two (not provided) to linger around how this flower is a positive role––a friend almost––– in this child’s life. i hope to incorporate descriptive word choices of colors and smells to establish the bright, fresh life of the flower, and how the child enjoys its presence.

 

finally part Three (not written) is a shift, as the flower is now dying (this is where the original poem may take place). rather than the child being disgusted of the flower’s transformation, the child may almost be curious and confused about this dying life. the mother’s comfort restore’s the child’s energy, and the vignette ends with the child moving on with life.

 

as you may have noticed, i deliberately kept words to a minimum to fit the character of a young girl. i would imagine that a young girl would not have many complex, developed thoughts. thus, this childhood vignette is comprised of short sentences, spontaneous thoughts, misspelled words, etc. having to create a character with a simplistic tone was one of the things i enjoyed most in this process. there was so much room to create this child’s narrative––through phrasing, spacing, spelling, and punctuation.

 

the amount of decisions i had to make was also overwhelming, as it was sometimes hard for me to come to a conclusion. for example, when I first started writing part One of my roz, honing in on a character was hard. did i want this child to be a girl or boy? how old did I want to make this girl? what do girls at 5-7 years old think about, and how do they talk? with part Three in mind, how would a 7 year old girl not know about a rose, or death? back to 5 years old. But do 5 year olds understand punctuation and natural pausing in colloquial conversations? perhaps they just run on and on in a sentence? or have sporadic, spontaneous thoughts? this was basically the process of thinking i underwent, and some of the questions still stand.

 

once i eventually came to a definite conclusion of character, i was also presented with the issue of deciding which details were necessary for the story to make sense, and which to leave out. to add, i liked this idea of shorter phrases (the sporadic, spontaneous thoughts I mentioned earlier), but i didn’t want this to turn into a vignette poem. i wanted to draw a distinct line between these young thoughts of the narrator from poetic form. what I did, and you see in the excerpt, is i leave violet’s brief thoughts and verbal expressions short, and almost “fill in the gaps” of the story through the mother’s quotes, exhibiting correct punctuation, complete sentences, etc.

 

personally, i found that writing something so short takes a long time, which was surprising! when i wrote the original piece, the Perspective of a Bedroom Rose, i had no difficulty writing through the perspective of this rose, since there were no guidelines as to how this rose would speak. it is simply a flower, that is old. thus, my maturer thoughts were an easy fit. here in Experiment One, my boundaries of writing was stretched as I tried to write from a five year old girl’s perspective. the diction and innocence is radically different from the original poem––this is what I expected and wanted! while the original poem may have short phrases and tidbits like this vignette, i am tried to create different auras between the two: young and fresh, versus old and spoiled.

 

my hope is that you read the original poem first to see, and understand, this excerpt!