Blog #7 Dina's Description

For me, the hardest part about description is knowing what to put in and what to leave out. I've learned that usually when I think I've put in too much, it's actually just right. Below is something I recently wrote that may turn into a novel or may just be something I wrote to entertain myself.

The brick house with black shutters that sat at the end of Franklin Drive was unusually full this evening, cars parked in the driveway and around the cul-de-sac. The neighbors didn't mind because many of them were in the house as well, showing their respect for the death of the woman who had lived there with her husband and teenage daughter. The teenager sat ignored but not forgotten in a large, overstuffed chair that dwarfed her slender frame and seemed to emphasize the vulnerability and grief in large, green eyes that made her look like a small child.

Had the teenager realized the image she projected, she would have been mortified, but the chair's pillowy cushions whose fabric retained the scent of her mother's perfume comforted her. She wore a long, black dress and had a black headband holding her straight, black hair out of her face. Katie Morgan had attended her mother's funeral earlier that day and all the people invading the living room, dining room, and kitchen had covertly watched her silently scream at the graveside when they'd lowered the lid on her mother's coffin, sealing her forever from Katie and the world Katie now had to navigate alone.

Katie had no one left - her father was in prison and, as far as she knew, there were no grandparents, uncles, aunts, or cousins. There had only been her mother, then Bruce. But Bruce didn't want her. He'd come into her bedroom that very morning as she was putting on her black boots. He'd told her she needed to pack because she would be leaving with a social worker after the funeral ceremony. He'd told her what she already knew but what had never been put into words for her, "Katie, if I hadn't loved your mother so much and if you hadn't been a condition of her marrying me, you wouldn't be here now. With her gone, I don't want you here. God knows, your mother loved you and, for some reason, she always excused your strange ways, but I don't like you. And you can't stay."

Katie hadn't cried. She hadn't moved or said a word. She'd simply nodded. With her mother gone, she didn't care where she went. She felt like she'd been knocked down by a strong wave in the ocean and was spinning around and around, the pain slicing her skin like the shells and the sand, the sadness drowning her lungs with salty tears. She was disoriented and didn't know if she'd ever surface again.