In a tiny nutty shell

A Match to the Heart” by Gretel Ehrlich demonstrates the power of brief, concise statements to convey vivid imagery and the emotions surrounding the story. This creative nonfiction piece dives right into the material and does not flounder around with opening statements. As I reflect and respond, I know I am so conditioned to writing in one format that I automatically wrote an introduction to this response. The only indicator to start the piece is the indentation to the first paragraph. The first sentence is not even a complete sentence, but its fragmentation serves to disorient the readers. It throws them into the story in the same condition as the protagonist; lost and confused.  The theme of drowning is made more powerful because the reader is thrown facedown into the story just as the author floats motionless. I usually associate power with jargon and verbose phrasing out of my habit of reading lengthy science papers. However, this short is full of sentences of less than five words and they are both strong and bold. The brevity of her words in the first paragraph gives the piece an ambiguous structure. The construction of her sentences gives the piece a loose texture in the sense that this is not a smooth peace with sentences running beautifully into the next. The piece starts and stops throughout. I found myself lost in the words, intentionally left unsure of the context of subject’s predicament. But Ehrlich would lose so much if she had begun, ‘One day I fell into the ocean” and continued to dish out the detail in such excess.  Metaphor and similes such as “(sound) is a snowplow moving grayness aside like a heavy snowdrift” allows her to rely on few words to describe the heaviness of the situation being lifted away without actually weighing down her description with excess words.  The sentences do not lack detail rather the comfort of extra words that usually fill space and serve as a safety blanket for bold ideas and thoughts.  Additionally, the sentence structure influences the way in which this story is read and the pace the reader takes. Because the story begins with choppy phrases, it creates a sense of rhythm, heightening the sense of an unpredictable ocean. The sentences lengthen as the piece progresses, changing the rhythm of my reading as the events in the story pick up pace. “A single heartbeat stirs gray water,” uses personification of the water to evoke the image of a single wave or the pulsation of the ocean.  “Blue trickles in,” relies on the sounds of individual words to heighten the imagery of color flowing back into the picture. She also lets the aftertaste of a word, such as trickle’s and its soft ‘tric’ sound to make the sound of real trickling water.  The sentences in the last two paragraphs slow the pace and shift the perspective of the piece. “A fish swims past and looks at me” and “they flank me like tiny rockets” move the mood into something lighter and hopeful. Ehrlich puts herself into context with the other objects in the piece, instead of an out-of-body observer.