Let's take a vote.

I've written the beginning of my short story from two different points of view. Tell me which one you like the best. (I know it's a lot of reading, but I really do appreciate it.)

P.O.V. #1: (It's been changed.)

“Shoot, Edna. Why you save all them nasty, old plastic flowers for? They take up too much room in my shed,” her husband Ray always complained. Edna usually just ignored him and continued humming her hymns. The flowers often blew into her front yard. After thunderstorms, Edna went into the yard and collected the bounty. Some people would have called the flowers litter, but Edna knew they were gifts from God, sent to give her life purpose.

She hoarded the sun bleached flowers in an unlit lean-to that was attached to their barn. The barn hadn’t been used for anything other than storage in over thirty years. The stench of cows had given way to the fragrance of mildew and musk in the place and part of the tin roof had been blown off by the tornados that had formed from Hurricane Opal in ’95. The same tornados had damaged many of the headstones, laying them flat in the cemetery across the street. Edna herself had spearheaded the operation to restore the monuments to their former glory. Several of the older headstones had crumbled into hundreds of pieces upon impact. Edna had singly funded the construction of identical new ones, despite constant bitching from Ray.

Edna and Ray had built the barn themselves. She easily remembered the feel of the hot tin on her hands, though her hands had been calloused from the time she could pick up a broom or a hammer. When they had begun building the barn, she was three months pregnant. When they finished the barn three months later, she was no longer pregnant. They had only paused for four days after her miscarriage.

Barn’s about as busted up as I feel, Edna often reflected when she was in the cool lean-to. The electricity that had originally brightened the shed had long since shorted out. She figured a mouse had probably chewed through some wires, though she had never found an electrified mouse. Just live ones. After going through countless D batteries trying to light the shed with a huge Coleman flashlight, Edna had bought an oil lamp. She much preferred the flickering, warm light of the fire over the bluish halogen light of the flashlight anyway. She felt the shifting light of the flame inspired her in her craft. And the oil lasted much longer than the batteries had.


Or P.O.V. #2:

I knew my lady was a little batty when I married her but she was always beautiful. Her beauty and the fact that she held out on me until we were married kept me coming back to her. I always wondered what she saw in me. She’s such an optimist — a dreamer, really. And I’ve always been a realist. Some people’d probably call me a pessimist. But I just call it like I see it. And right now I see that my wife has gone off the deep end.

She’s been collecting them damn flowers for months now. Hiding ‘em in the shed where my lawn mower’s supposed to go. I gotta keep it in the barn now. And part of the tin roof got blown off during a tornado a few years back. So when it rains, my lawn mower gets wet. Don’t know why she’s saving them flowers no way. They’re all bleached out from the sun and the wires are poking through the green plastic stems. Can’t nobody call them things pretty or worth nothing. She’s got this idea that they’re her life’s mission or something. She’s fixin’ them up and gonna put them back on the graves that don’t have any flowers on them. She’s gluing all these doodads on the petals. Sequins and shit. And beads. Dyed feathers. Ain’t no bird in this world got feathers as purple as some of them feathers she got. Says she’s gonna “beautify” them and put them on the “lonely” graves, she calls them.

I do love her. Yeah, she’s a little fruity. But she loves people. Her heart is pure gold, that woman’s. Wants everybody in the whole world to love each other. Me, being the realist, I know that that won’t never happen, but it is a nice idea. Wouldn’t be no wars. But then, wars give men purpose. Without wars men’d be walking around without no purpose. They’d have to do the women’s work. And then what would the women do? I guess they’d have more babies.

Edna never had any babies. She always wanted a lot of kids. So did I. But she lost one and she’s never been able to get pregnant again. She’s sixty-something now, and way past her birthing years. Sometimes I wonder if she’d had some babies how different she would be. Like her life would have some purpose. Instead she decorates them damn flowers.


Okay, what do you think? (Sorry about the curse words, Sara. It fits the character.)