Poem - She Rides With Him

[the_wiggins]

Title: She Rides With Him
Author: The_Wiggins
Era/season/setting: In between seasons 5 and 6. Shortly after The Gift.
Rating: T
Warnings: Suicidal ideation/sorta attempt, car crash. (No depictions of character death.)
Author's Note: My first fanfic poem. Would never have thought to do it if it weren't for thenewbuzwuzz's influence and all of her wonderful work promoting

Comments

[passion4spike]

WOW. I honestly am just speechless. This is beautiful and amazing and perfect. So many feelings. love how you used the spacing of the words to make them pop that much more. I really don't have enough words to do this justice, just absolutely WOW!

[the_wiggins]

Thank you so much! I'm flattered. :)

Nice to hear that the word spacing worked for you. Sometimes I find that kinda thing a bit pretentious, but it just kinda felt like the thing to do here and I went with my gut.

By the way, I've started the reading your Mortal Allies series and have really enjoyed the writing. Will review on EF as soon as I can!

[passion4spike]

This is honestly the standout of this round, IMO! Really love it!

I hope you enjoy Mortal Allies! It's a fun little series which has absolutely no plan, so heaven only knows where it will end up! Well, of course, Spuffy will happen eventually, but other than that {shrug}. I hope to keep the series fairly light, but knowing my muse, that will only suffice for so long. He lives off tears, which is probably why your poem hit me so strongly! It's brilliant! <3

[the_wiggins]

Yes, my muse also lives off of tears! Great way of putting it.

And again, I'm just super flattered by the comments I've gotten on this one. I honestly wasn't sure if I could write poetry (or at least do it well). Glad I tried!

[holi117]

this is beautiful. Well done!

[the_wiggins]

Thank you!

[slaymesoftly]

Well, this was just lovely. I tend to avoid poetry as a rule, but I'm so glad I clicked on this.

[the_wiggins]

That's high praise knowing that you enjoyed this even though poetry's not generally your thing! I must have done something right. I'm glad you clicked on it and that it was worth your while. :)

[pfeifferpack]

This is utterly lovely! Each word choice is spot-on. The emotions rip at the heart. It does just what poetry is supposed to do.

Your imagery is brilliant but a couple are just breath-taking.

But she’s too faint,

stretched too thin,

torn to mist by the hungry air.

and

wrapped in arms made of air

and love

and other insubstantial things.

Really a beautiful post The Gift fic that is so wonderfully in character. I do think he would have been suicidal had he not made that promise to Buffy. Only that made him suck up the pain and continue on. I always thought that had Buffy not come back he would have met the sun as soon as Dawn was gone.

Excellent!
Kathleen

[the_wiggins]

Thank you! You give such excellent feedback :)

Yeah, those lines you quoted are some of my favorites too.

Nice to hear that it felt in character. I was hoping not to go to maudlin with the suicide themes, cause that's heavy stuff. It kinda crept into the work without me planning it. And I wanted to leave some room for amgiuity in terms of whether he actually intented to commit suicide or was just willing to die. But yeah, definitely agree with your general analysis that his promise to Buffy (and desire to support Dawn) was probably the only thing that kept him going.

[wolfshadoe]

😢😭
God this is amazing. Exquisitely agonisingly perfect. It made my eyes fill up like nothing else. It's now my favourite buffyverse poem and I love it so 💜💙💜💙

[the_wiggins]

Oh, thank you so much! Knowing that I invoked genuine emotion is always so gratifying for me as a writer. And I'm of course really flattered that you liked it so much!