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Feedback on Maps
In "Maps" by Olivia Su, there are two people in which one has a problem with self harm, suicide, and an eating disorder. The narrator is begging the other to stay, while the other person carves a beautiful map of red into their arm. The suicidal person tells the narrator that they couldn't go on anymore and that the guns under their bed was the only option. This is extremely powerful for a person who has considered suicide before. Olivia is clearly describing how a person with depression thinks and feels. The way Olivia describes the narrator's friend's "map" puts the reader into the picture and makes the reader feel the raw pain that the narrator and the friend feel
For someone who has first handedly considered suicide, I feel as if Olivia did a beautiful job in describing a depressed person. "When I see the stars weave their fingers through strands of velvet skies, I think of you...where constellations hid behind crying ceilings..." The narrotor says that they had seen stars in the ceased person and that constellations had woven through the ceased person but that was all hidden behind tears and streaks of blood. The narrator goes on to tell that even though they had begged and pleaded with the other, the person had still kept a gun under their bed and a knife wedged "between thighs and raw denim." A relapse occured with a new mural carved into their arm, with blood streaking into lines and painting a map through bones and veins. I think that the way Olivia describes this is truly beautiful, as she turns her emotions into a piece of art as did the narrator's friend where she turned her battle scars into a detailed map with cuts adorning their skin.
I loved how Olivia compared the drifting away of her friend to petals of a dying dandelion drifting away into the vast world. The demons that she describes were haunting the suicidal person until she couldn't take it anymore and that was when the narrator lost their friend.
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