Short short stories

For someone who is considering being a writer, I am incredibly bad at writing stories, short or otherwise. I love reading stories and novels; losing myself in the plot, details, and identifying with a character or two. Writing them, however, is a completely different story (pun intended).

I live my life as a sort of slave to my emotions. I do everything based on how it feels, or the vibes I get from things. I feel everything so deeply, which can be a gift as well as a burden. I write poetry very well because it is meant to evoke emotions and empathy. I like writing about a specific moment or detail. Stories are hard to write because they focus more on a central plot and characters.

I loved reading the short story about the gay couple who we assumed both had AIDS. While it was kind of sad because the story talked about how he did not want to survive his partner, I enjoyed the symbolism and the narration of the story. It was about one moment and the thought process that can go into that one moment. They were arguing about who was going to die first, and the narrator was explaining his thinking on why he wanted to die first.

His partner's family would come to visit his flat after the funeral, and he talked about how they disapproved of their son's lifestyle. Why would they even attend the funeral if they disapproved and clearly hated their son so much? And why would they come to visit their son's partner if they had such contempt for him?

I felt the narrator talking about setting the parrot free was very symbolic. The parrot would be free of it's cage, just like when the partner died he would finally be free of the disapproval of others.