he turns away

My found poem was created with the words of the short story “lamb to the slaughter“. In the story, Mary and her husband Patrick have a conflict, where Mary is pregnant and needs Patrick to help with work, while Patrick wants to leave Mary because it’ll do better for his work. This part of the story starts at paragraph 40, after Patrick breaks the truth to Mary, who went to get the lamb for their dinner.

All right then, they would have lamb for supper. She carried it upstairs, holding the thin bone-end of it with both her hands, and as she went through the living-room, she saw him standing over by the window with his back to her, and she stopped.

When she came back, she saw the ambient back view of her husband, and that is where my poem starts. I did this because I thought that this was the part where they really separated, this is the part where the villain turns on the hero, where Anakin Skywalker turns into Vader. I pictured a dark shadow of the husband’s back view by the window, which is where my title came from.

At that point, Mary Maloney simply walked up behind him and without any pause she swung the big frozen leg of lamb high in the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the back of his head.

I had to include parts of this part because this would be the climax of my short story. This is where all the action is, where the protagonist’s feelings take over herself, and she loses her mind and lets it all out in an instant. In this instant, everything changed. Mary was now a lone to-be mother, completely in shock of what she just did.

She stepped back a pace, waiting, and the funny thing was that he remained standing there for at least four or five seconds, gently swaying. Then he crashed to the carpet. The violence of the crash, the noise, the small table overturning, helped bring her out of the shock. She came out slowly, feeling cold and surprised, and she stood for a while blinking at the body, still holding the ridiculous piece of meat tight with both hands. All right, she told herself. So I’ve killed him.

This is the part in the story where Mary realizes what just happened. In this part of the story, She is the one that starts changing, because before this happened, she was the victim, and Patrick was the clear antagonist, trying to leave Mary. After this part in the story, Mary chooses to hide the murder, and we can see Mary’s inner evil start coming out. I used the words “violence, noise, shock”, to create suspense, and to illustrate an aftershock/reaction.

For the background, I chose a dark, gradient photo because it creates an eerie feel, you can find them here! For the text, I used different colors to blend the extra text in with the gradient background for a better effect on it. I also used a stick-like font, because really synergised with the background and colors, and makes it look more creepy.