Poetic Justice is written by Diana Appleyard, and it is a short story, and was published in Days of Wine and Roses, Black Swan, London 2004.
The story is about a woman who finds her ex-boyfriend, Jed Cunningham on the Friends Unite website. Then she tells us ''in her mind'' about their relationship in high school, how much she loved him, about Jed himself and about their break-up. She tells us how her life is boring, that her ''energy is gone'' after the break up, and how she had been depressed.
When they broked up, he told her that he would never speak or contact her again, but suddenly he sends her an email after she finds him on the Friends Unite. Then they start to write to each other, asking how their lives are and etc. until Jed tells her that he ''drove his wife insane'' because she wasn't her - the narrator. She is shocked after she reads it. She always thought her life was boring, and all her energy and wildness was gone, that she is reserved. But she is shocked because she had always thought, that Jed's life was perfect, that he was over it and moved on a long time ago.
She doesn't reply, but deletes the mail and it was gone into ''infinite cyberspace''.
The story only evolves around two characters: the female narrator and Jed Cunningham. They are at the same age and British. She is living somewhere in the UK in a suburban neighbourhood with her husband, two children and her dog Bramble. She writes articles for a newspaper or magazine and picks her daughter up from school every day.
We actually just know a few facts about the middle aged Jim, that he is living alone in some remote place by the sea with his dog Roger. It's the only fact the narrator knows about him, and therefore the only fact we know about him.
But in the story, our narrator describes the young Jim that she was in love with: He was the coolest of the cool with the fashion everyone else followed and who always stood outside the herd. He didn't like to be seen as popular. He was intelligent and wanted to travel and be a poet. She describes him as ''tall, thick black hair with a tuft at the front, blue blue eyes in pale skin, broad shouldered but so skinny, his mouth curved into a sardonic smile''. But best of all, he was her boyfriend andshe was so much in love with him.. Her description of him, gives us an idea or a picture about his personality. He is a person who never wants to do the expected and always is going to do his best, you could call him a man who believes in dreams.
But actually, that is the reason why they broke up. She was realistic, she didn't believe in dreams. When Jim was about to travel to Ireland to be a poet, she felt at that moment the weight of society and family expectations, and therefore she didn't go with him. She was realistic, but in his eyes she was being bourgeois. She wanted to travel with him, but for her it was an impossible dream, and she broke a dream that was real for him, and therefore he left her with the promise that he never would speak or contact her again.
The narrator describes their youthful relationship like ''an adult affair among children'', that he wrote her the most wonderful letters and that she wanted to marry him. They lived their two years together in a bubble, a bubble full of secret codes and messages and looks that no one else could understand. But they never made love, and maybe it was good, because it might have ruined the feeling of being a child together, if they made love.
Most of the story is told by a 3rd person narrator, it is seen from the narrator's point of view, but in the last three sentences, is a 1st person narrator is suddenly introduced.
The theme of the story is choices. As Jim wrote ''she was not you'', tells us that Jim actually still believes in the dream that she broke many years ago, but it was too late, why? well, he made a choice by leaving her, but what he got to understand, that behind every choice there are consequences. The consequence is that the narrator opens her eyes and realizes that he cannot just go back even though her life not is perfect or the life she had dreamed of. I am not saying that Jim is stupid by holding on to his dream, i think it is a positive attitude to have. But it is very important sometimes to open your eyes and be realistic, so you don't get hurt.
He left her in the beginning, and now she has ''left'' him, and i think that this is the poetic justice of the story, and why the theme is choices.