~ hopeless.

Everyone around me 

Has some hand in their own glory
Some build bridges
Some watch them wash away
Most are burnt down
By those who think they have no use for them
I collect
Their eroded bricks
And pelted stones
Use them to build my house by the sea
But the waves lashing out on the shore
Lost me my house
My pride and honour
All the sandcastles we made
When I was a child,
Still filled with wonder;
I would look at the stars and
Question the cold, unforgiving wind -
"Why do you make my eyes water?"
Except, back then,
The white diamonds amidst
The searing, complete blackness
Would fill me with hope;
Everybody around me
Knows what they want to do
And I sit here
On my lonely chair on the sand,
Watching my bridges crumble
Alone, wondering -
When will my time come?

Then a hand taps my shoulder,
"Who is it?" I ask,
I do not look up; there is no need to,
I recognize the touch
Warm, careful.

"I know what you're thinking."
"Really? What?"
"That you won't be able to make anything of your life."
"Right you are."
"It doesn't have to be this way."
"I don't know how to fix anything,
I have lost myself,
I do not know where to go,
Who to meet,
How to talk,
Silence is my only solace - "
"We both know that's not true."
"It is, now, for me."

Then suddenly a hand takes mine,
Flips a switch on the other side of the universe
And shows me the future
I live in an apartment
I have friends over, today
And we laugh and relive the old days
When we were freer
There are trees lining the road
And the sun lights up the dust and smoke between them.
I realize
All is not lost.

~ Vruta, October 2017.

Enigma.

A dance between minds
A meeting of the senses
In the foreign dark streets of the previously inhabited
That have since been deserted for want of
Better lives
A dash of black illuminating the recesses of the cold, damp city
Or perhaps by the side of a stream
Somewhere deep in the forest
Far away from either of our homes
Or a quiet library where no one dares to disturb
And piles of books lie undisturbed for weeks
Perhaps it is there that we find salvation
For the world will soon tire of us,
We are but one of its many puzzles
And so we must flee
To someplace no one will find us
Hidden forever
Until the dawn comes and we wake in our own beds.

~ Vruta Gupte, 2017.

lowercase.

i do not usually write in the afternoon. i am now.  some rules are meant to be broken, maybe.  some rules are meant to never be followed.  i sometimes wish i were one of those people who did not need rules.  unfortunately, i have been told that rules are necessary for success, that in order to become somebody, i must first be in control of my mind and body.  sometimes i wonder why i want to be a somebody at all.

what if i were a nobody?  what if i were line breaks and spaces instead of words?  silence between conversations, or sentences?  what if i were to disappear?  oh, but spaces and line breaks and silence can’t disappear.   i had forgotten about that.  some rules cannot be broken.  otherwise, they would have had no meaning at all.

but who are we to decide what is meaningful and what is not?  then again, it would be rather in our own favour if we were to assign a different meaning to different things.  speaking of differences and sameness, i have seen (i might be wrong, though) that everybody’s definition of somebody is almost mostly the same.  study hard, make money, buy a house, or houses, buy a car, buy more cars, buy a huge flat-screen television, or buy one of those curved ones, go to the opera, go to broadway shows, buy more houses, buy san francisco, buy las vegas, los angeles, buy new york city, go to starbucks for coffee, oh, and drink wine, drink lots of wine, and clink your glass with the lady’s, she’s in another of those sickly sequined scarlet dresses...beer is probably for the uninitiated.  then only you will be a somebody.  i don’t condemn their efforts to reach new highs (people have their reasons, i’d suppose)--i only do not like the idea that there can only be one somebody.  what happens to the rest of them, who are they?

what are you until you are a somebody?  what is wrong with being nobody?  what is wrong with being just anybody, as long as you are doing what you love, and as long as you are happy (maybe not all the time, but that’s still fine)?  i am tired already; why do i have to be ready, all the time?  maybe we have forgotten what respite really is.  maybe it is sad we need respite at all.  or maybe it isn’t.  i wouldn’t know; i’m not somebody.  i am writing in lowercase so that i keep reminding myself that i am yet still a nobody.  a nobody in the middle of nowhere, trying to justify her existence inside this universe using words (mostly plagiarized)—and pictures she has seen, movies she has watched (sometimes she wishes her life were like a movie; then she remembers some movies have sad endings), places she has been (although these have been but very few—no new york or california—just maryland and virginia, mostly their libraries).  a nobody who keeps questioning her motives, her beliefs—and eventually she questions them so much that she doesn’t know if she can follow in anyone’s footsteps at all, and she is too apprehensive to clear some dirt from between two pink-and-white tiles and plant an apple seed there, because what if someone comes along and tells her her tree is worse than that other tree growing there on the other side of the road?

maybe somebody else thinks the same thing too, could there be a somebody one and a somebody two?

a somebody three and a somebody four? somebodies not afraid to knock on a closed door, unafraid of what they would find, a somebody six and a somebody five? a somebody seven and a somebody eight, not caring if they do the right thing a little late? what if i don’t have to be somebody? i could...i could be anybody. 

I could be anybody, anybody at all.  I could be a thirteen-year-old playing gully cricket with my friends, hoping our ball doesn’t hit somebody on the head—or worse, smash somebody’s window and then hit their head.  I could be a sixteen-year-old trying to choose between literature and chemistry (yeah, it’s sad we have to do that, really—we need more time; I guess everybody thinks the same thing, though: everybody needs more time).  I could be a twenty-year-old trying to make the most difficult choice in life ever.  A thirty-year-old desperately searching for a boyfriend, or just someone to room with.  A fifty-two-year-old tired of his desk job and regretting that one night he got drunk and called somebody.  A single mom in America holding it all in, like a Ziploc bag full (about to burst) and every day, hoping to not scream her head off when her kids come home from school in the afternoon.  A hungry kid in Africa crouched in the sand, with a vulture eyeing him: the photographer who took this picture killed himself.

I could be a scared little person typing words on a screen, trying really really hard to keep typing in lowercase as fast as I can (and failing, again).  Occasionally the scared little person could stop and think if she was being overly verbose, or less self-explanatory, or anything other than what she wants to be (she doesn’t mind not being somebody, if things don’t work out well; here, well means in her favour—and not anybody else’s, which makes her a little sad).  Anybody could be a somebody, and everyone could be anybody, even nobody.  Scared Little Person does wonder sometimes if she is on the right road; she also wonders if all roads lead to the same pot of gold—or abyss—at the end of their paths.  Maybe the tar would condense in a large ball of blackish goo, at the end. 

Maybe the cobblestones would melt away into lava.  Maybe Scared Little Person falls off the cliff made of gooey tar into the lava—and never comes back out again, obviously.  Would it be painful?  Would it be quick?  Scared Little Person doesn’t want to know.  Because Scared Little Person is, well, scared.  Of pretty much everything.  Of knowledge, taxes, the bad guys, guns, buses, high-speed trains, things that crush bones and draw blood, thought-trains, death, friendship, and love.  Scared Little Person does wish she were not so anxious all the time, but since that is the only thing she knows how to do, she descends into the downward spiral again and again and...again, each time hoping she will snap out of it for good— but you know, the thing is, Scared Little Person is scared of snapping too. 

It hurts, sometimes.  Scratch that—always.  Snapping is like drowning: you die, but it’s painful and your eyes roll back into your head, gross.

Scared Little Person doesn’t want to be scared.  That’s why she wants to be somebody, so other scared little people won’t go through whatever she went through.  Maybe someday, she’ll be somebody—until then, she’ll keep believing anybody can be somebody: even a nobody.

~FIN~

Zero Brightness.

Image taken from https://inspiremykids.com/

Sometimes I stare at my computer screen at two in the morning.  It's blank, much like the wall behind it and in front of me.  It then occurs to me that I haven't written anything properly substantial in quite a few days.

At this point I start wondering if writing longhand would help; it's been too long since I've done that.  But then again, I'm not sure if I would be able to translate my thoughts from pen to paper instead of from keypress to screen, and thence blog--typing something you've already written out feels weird, the way you felt when you copied carefully curated paragraphs from Wikipedia into your homework and hoped extremely earnestly your teacher wouldn't notice (you know, 'cause back in the sixth grade we were all honorable persons--'for Brutus is an honorable man, so are they all, all honorable men').

And since I'm not sure, I won't write longhand.  I will keep staring at my screen, at two in the morning, mourning a little at my inability to form captivatingly coherent sentences.  I will think more about things and people than about words.  I will extrapolate my current state five or ten years into the future, wondering what it'll be like.  Where will I be?  Who will I be with?  Will I find my answers?  Of course, asking these questions to oneself right now would be--to say the least--futile, but at two in the morning, futility is not something I am immoderately concerned about.  

Two in the morning is supposed to be a time for adventure, and that adventure could also be inside your own head.  Or maybe you walk out onto the beach in the middle of the night, trying to spot waves.  Maybe you make a sandcastle in the dark, and then feel the sand falling through your toes because you stuck your foot in it by mistake.  Maybe you sit on the lone (pedophilic) swing and listen to songs of the night--chirping crickets and crackling incandescent bulbs--and sometimes John Mayer.  Then you probably watch a movie and walk home with your friend, shielding each other from the cold (quite ineffectively, because cold tends to leak through things, sometimes even your skin), and trying to hit the high notes from Mozart's Lacrimosa (and failing miserably, but not giving a flying rat's arse).  

Then, at two in the morning, you go back to your room, the one with the orange curtains, curse yourself for forgetting to shut your laptop down, and write all about what two in the morning feels like.

~

On Writing.

Words, words, words.

So many of them everywhere.  We try to find meaning in them, to coax our minds and hearts into an endless romance with life, and death, so much so that sometimes the world itself appears to be made of stardust and rainbows.

Alas, life is not so simple.  We are but tiny two-dimensional dots travelling across the fabric of the universe and time.

We attempt to make sense of all that happens, and has happened: our lives are carefully crafted, curated by our fiddlesome memories; we forget, and we remember, and that is life.  In all this, there is no one to judge; who knows your own life better than yourself?

And still we writers dare to put ourselves out onto a yacht we have never been on, to traverse the seven infinite seas in search of destiny (if it may exist), and meaning, and love.  Or a train.  Or a spaceship.  Who knows, maybe someday, we will reach someplace where we find all these things.  Maybe we never will.  Our lives are a tumultous tapestry of constructed, biased longings that we thought were important, once upon a time.  We believe many things; most of them are probably not true.  But we must persevere, for only then will we be free.  Only then can we hope to understand.  We are all imposters, playing our own parts in this circle of life and death, and in search of the great beyond, we lose ourselves until the once-bright sun is but a speck of light at the end of a dark, dark tunnel.  

I do believe, though, that eventually we will be found.  And when that happens, the world will cease spinning, and everything might finally make sense.

~

The Imposter's Lament.

Orange.

So I draw the curtains, with my window still open.  I don't want people to see inside; feels intrusive.

The curtains here are orangey.  They're green at home.  An antithesis, if I think about it more (sometimes I'm tired and I don't want to think), and each reminds me of different things.  Home reminds me of the distant past, and this room with the orange curtains reminds me of the present, if the present is something you can be reminded of.

I'm listening to a song, again.  I've been listening to a lot of songs, these days.

New ones.  Old ones.  Friendly ones.  Ones that cut you and make you think you'd rather die...these are sometimes necessary.  If you want to know a person, just listen to the songs they've sent you; it'll tell you what kind of person they are.  Or not.  This song is a bit of all of it.

In the room with the orange curtains, I spend my days doing assignments, reading books, studying for tests, and chatting with people on Messenger.  Quite a peaceful existence, really.  Sometimes I wonder if I am not much of a feeler.  Then my friend sends me a message and I remember that I am not as much of a robot as I think I am...either fortunately or unfortunately.  Robots, for one, follow algorithms in everything they do, or are told to do.  I don't.

Outside this room, I am pretty much the same, except I talk to people a little more.  Outside this room, I am quite jolly, if I may say so myself.  My friends here do not think of me as too quiet a person, insofar as people can be said to be too quiet.  Outside this room, my otherwise drab existence fills with colours I haven't seen before.  Our neighbours have made rangolis in front of their doors.  In the night, I see fairy-lights twinkling in unusual places.  Sometimes I hear music too.  At midnight, most of it dies down.  At midnight, you can hear the crickets chirping, or a boy talking on the phone with his mother.  If you listen closely enough, you can hear people laughing, too.  I think the only thing missing here is snow.  But the night is dark enough that you would not need whiteness to accentuate its silence.

It's cold in the dark.  Cold enough to take a walk, shivering incessantly (for some reason, I don't want the shivering to stop, though; keeps me awake).  And while this walking business is still going on, I meet a few people.  It is here that discussions about biology and bonds and assignments happen.  Sometimes it is small talk, with many where-are-you-goings and where-have-you-beens and what-will-you-do-afters.  Sometimes I am called back upstairs by a mysterious urge to quantify the darkness into zeroes and ones on a blank, white screen: although I believe darkness is not something that can be described (adequately and perfectly).  Most times I fight this urge and keep walking, because how will I write if I do not experience?  My imagination is a clichéd curry of random outpourings I have past regurgitated, just so.  I believe things I have read in books, and watched in movies, without once stopping to see if they were true.

And hence it is here I wish to find truth.  This place is somehow more real, even though all most of us students receive here is largely fabricated and unrepresentative of reality (you know, grades.  It's sad, really).  Here you can walk four kilometres just to find a place to eat, and traverse a considerable distance to buy a cake for your friend and classmate in the middle of the night, only to leave it in the freezer when you get back—it is not cake anymore, then, it is cake-matté.  Nevertheless, as my friends and I sing happy birthday the next day, I realize this place could not have given me more: it's quite a gift.  A present.

~

While we're wild and free

We'll skip like we're stones on the sea

We'll sing like we're birds in the tree that grows

Outside your window, while we're new and young

We'll shine like a morning sun

No matter the seasons that come and go

And which way the wind blows.

  

The Aloner.

His words, I feel, are magic. You don't know where they come from, but they are always there, in the back of your mind, and they remind you of things like stardust and the aroma of coffee and cream in the morning, of fresh, warm croissants—these I have been missing of late—of dewdrops and wet earth after the rain, the almost scalding sunshine when you have no cap to shield your eyes, and that perfumed scent of the yellowed pages of a book that people have forgotten about, but you remember, and, oh, I could go on forever. For men may come and men may go; but he will always remain immortalized, past his time and life, and death, as someone who wielded words, but not as weapons.

He used words to make you exalt and suffer at the same time, as though he wanted to remind you of the maladies that most of us are, but he did not wish you drowned in your (inevitable) despair and sadness, either. Quite a paradox, he was. He buried himself, and still wanted people (me, I like to think) to understand. Amused, yet amusing. Half empty, and half full. Broken, but he would never break you. My truest friend and his own worst enemy.

Tell Me.

Tell me how

Your day was today.

Tell me how

You felt when you walked

Barefoot in the grass

After the thunderous rainfall.

Tell me how

The blades pierced your feet, but

You were still happy about

Merely being.

Tell me how you

And your friends

Played ten guitars and

Sang a song together,

Tell me whenever

You want to talk to me,

I will always be there;

Tell me how

You spent the last

Five minutes, tell me

Something about yourself

That nobody else knows,

Tell me what

Time you wake up

Every morning, tell me

Why you have been so

Quiet lately but words

Rush through you

Like drops of water

On a leaf

Tell me

Everything

And I will

Tell you.

~Vruta Gupte (2016).

Astra

 I walk through
 The cloud of stars
 Red yellow blue white
 And I wish that
 You were here, because I 
 Know that when you
 Look at stars you 
 Lose yourself and
 Why would you not want 
 Me to see in your eyes
 Reflections of your hope and
 Fears, when I
 Asked you what you were afraid of,
 You said nothing, did you 
 Mean it, or were you 
 Afraid of reaching for the
 Stars and landing on 
 The moon; know this 
 That one day you will be
 Far out into the deepest space and please
 Remember me and what I wished for,
 Know this, that I do not
 Trade one wish for another, 
 And remember that even
 If we are not together, you will find
 What you have been looking for
 Ages past and ages hence we will
 Spend side by side
 Remember me and your stars and
 The time we had,
 When you walk through
 The cloud of stardust
 I will wait for time to stand still
 And so will you. 

~Vruta Gupte (2016).

Blackdust.

BLACKDUST.

Darkness,

Black.

Unyielding.

Look around,

What do you see?

No floodlights

To save you this time

As you put your hand

Out over the edge of

The cliff; no candles

To burn the letters from me

You wish to hide.

No mist to

Lose yourself in,

Vanish, with a

Flourish of your cape, from

Time.

There is nothing

You can lean on,

Nothing to

Set you free;

No clouds to scream at,

No storms but 

The one within yourself, are you

Sure you will not listen

To me?  I will tell you tales

Of a land not far away from

Here, that you will go to one day—so

Keep walking, even if there are

No floodlights

To save you this time

No candles 

To burn my letters

No mist

To hide away in;

A land where you can wish

For the orange sunrise and you will see it,

You can wish for yellow cornfields and 

Run past them 

You can build your own

House in the sunlight,

You can rub your eyes in the morning, and say,

“I have arrived,”

Go on, my friend, there are

Many doors you have not yet opened,

Many people you have not met,

Many things you have not seen;

There is far more to life, far more to

Believing

Than this moment in Time when you

Want to run away

From this smoke in the air that you

Would rather not breathe,

You must lead—for only

Then I will follow you

Out of the dust and 

Into space; finally

We will be free.

~Vruta Gupte (2016).

Vision.

VISION.

When

We are old will you

Stay with me?

Guide me with the light of

My fading eyes whitened

With age, will you

Show space to me?

The stars, the moon,

The galaxies,

Jupiter and Saturn

Andromeda and Regulus, will you

Watch me as I fiddle

Uneasily with my pen when I

Can’t see what I’m writing, when I

Knock my favourite vase down,

Can’t I see?

I can’t see, will you

Walk me down the aisles of the

Library we will go to, as I ask

You where I can

Find Fountainhead and Macbeth, will you

Hold my hand when

We are alone and I want to go out but I

Can’t find the doorknob, will you

Sing with me when I remember suddenly

The words to a nursery rhyme from

Long ago when I was smaller?

When

We are old will you

See with me?

~Vruta Gupte (2016).

Nostalgia.

As we walk along the path

That is Life

Our roads may diverge

Yours may be bright and sunny

With meadows green and silent, peaceful

Mine may be full of colour, a forest, and falling rain

And even if sometimes your way seems

Filled with potholes and snakes and wetlands;

And mine, with red fire burning, and all the trees gone,

Remember.

Remember that once we walked together, endured together,

Through soot and snow,

With cold water in our shoes;

You shook it out, I couldn’t

Remember.

A road fraught with perils, danger lurking

Around every bend,

You fought them, I didn’t.

And we went our own

Separate ways.

Someday when you look back

You will laugh at your past

Worrying self, you will

Wake up to the sunrise at the edge of

The earth, and you will look out into the distance, and say,

“What a wonderful day, o me, o Life!”

Remember,

We never know the places we’ll go

Until we reach them.

We never cross the rapids in rivers

Until we fight them.

We never bother to see

How good life is with our tiny, tiny problems

Until we see another, without.

You will look out into the distance,

And you will see a sillhouette.

By then you will have forgotten, but your heart will tell you--

I know her from somewhere.

First slowly, and then all at once, you will

Remember

The first snowfall, six feet high, us, trudging along

Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening,

Helping a squirrel

With her acorns before the icy winter,

Watching as the leaves on trees wither and die,

Wondering if we will, too;

Forgetting that spring and fall come after,

And all will be well

Once again, this time, forever.

I will be close enough, then, for you to

Look into my eyes

And see how much I missed you,

Walking beside you, laughing with you;

After years of searching for the perfect Life,

With cold gold in our pockets,

But none to share it with,

We find each other.

I will take your hand,

And lead you onward

To the beginning

Of a new adventure.


~Vruta Gupte (2016).

Coal Tar.

Image Source: dreamstime.com

Coal Tar.

Pitch black.
Blended darkness.
Secrets smouldering
In burning velvet
Lost forever
To the graying silvered
Ashes of time.
Rainclouds storming
Through the sky;
Thunder after,
Silence, deafening.
They forgot
The calming rays of
Sunlight everlasting,
The morning dew on the cut grass

The crisp smell of the wet earth,
As everybody forgets
There is dawn after darkness,
And darkness after light,
So there is peace after war,
And war after peace;
Words that have been said
Cannot be taken back:
Like burnt coal in the hearth
They leave scars on the hearts
Of people who once believed
That everything would turn out fine
They forget
The laws of nature
Pertain to all beings
And while their days away
In glorious despair
As the future runs its course
Without want of consultation.

~Vruta Gupte.

Types Of Farts

WARNING: This post may contain objectionable material.  If you are under fourteen years of age, please ask a parent or a guardian before reading it.  (Well, it's probably not that objectionable...Hmmm...just read the title and decide whether you really want to read it.)  And if you like it, I dare you to sing it to your own tune, record it, mix it with some background music, and play it over the P.A. system of the nearest mall.  

Or maybe not.  You decide.  If you are going to do the mall thing, though, try not to get into trouble.  And I want credits, too, because this is gonna be huge.

Anyway, here goes.

TYPES OF FARTS 

Once upon a time
I had to write a rhyme
And I didn't know where to start,
So I thought it's pretty cool
It could make y'all peeps drool
If I write one about how we fart.

Three kinds of farts
One is just like a dart
It rips into the air suddenly
Its smell is kinda sharp
And it sounds like a harp
(But it's not the very best in quality.)

The next one, mind,
Is the silent smelly kind.
Make sure you don't wander too close
It reeks of methane 
Enough to drive you insane
Like a serious Sleeping Draught overdose.
(Harry Potter reference!)

The third one's better
But it's definitely louder
Than the ones I've mentioned above
And even though it's not exactly
Our biggest, hugest fantasy
It's the one we (almost) love!
('Cause it don't smell.)

And if by some misfortune
That's not really opportune
You happen to chance upon one of these,
Don't stay around long,
Just start singing this song,
And make me famous--please!

(Ew, what's that smell?)

~Vruta Gupte


If you like this and want to check out more of my funnier (and serious) stories or poems, please click here!  Thank you for reading!

Two Friends: Part One

She sat beside me on the park bench we'd sat on for so many years.  Since we were eleven, to be precise.

Let me give you a brief idea about how we met.

So she was building this tree house in her backyard. (Her family has an apple tree. How cool is that?)  And-- you guessed it-- she asked me to help her. Me, a bespectacled, nerdy, lanky nine year old who looked like he hadn't played a day in his life-- helping her, the most beautiful girl on the planet. (I don't think she cared about the not-played-a- day-in-my-life part back then, though. She wasn't half as smart then as she is now. Or maybe she cared, but she acted like she didn't.)  Our ‘tree house' was basically a roof made out of sticks atop a floor made out of sticks with no walls in between. Very comfortable. (I'm kidding.) And it wasn't exactly on the tree. It was on the grass, so technically it should've been called a grass house-- but that doesn't sound as inviting.

So anyway, we named it Veronica's and Andre's Little Treehouse. Veronica. What a  beautiful name. No one understands me like she does, and I love her, and that only makes it worse to be with her.
Y'know, accelerated heartbeat, sweaty palms, sweaty forehead, incoherent mumbled speech, that sorta thing. Butterflies. All that.

She doesn't know yet.

I don't even know if she likes me. She talks about that other guy, Cory, a lot. I, personally, would not stand within a five-yard radius of that douche (sorry, couldn't help it). You should see the way he talks to her.  Unfortunately, on this twisted geoid that is the Earth, all girls fall for jerks and the nice guys are left behind.

Sometimes I wonder if my parents named me Andre because they specifically didn't want any girl to be the... person... of my affections (I don't like saying object, it sounds impersonal).
I can tell Veronica likes saying my name for some weird reason, though. Most girls don't know how to.  They say “And-ray" when it's actually “Aand-re" with the “re" like it is in “in re".

I know, very simple.

Anyway, after building that tree house, we did spend quite a lot of time inside it, even though it used to get all itchy after some time. Then we used to go get some cream and rub it all over ourselves. And then we used to go sit in the tree house. Again. Because some things you just can't let go of.

The tree house became too small for us to sit in as we grew older, so we graduated to the park bench, and we've been coming to sit here and talk as often as our schedules permit.

We used to hang out every day, but soon both of us had other things to look after.  She had her boyfriends, and I had my girlfriends.  A few of my exes broke up with me because they thought I spent too much time with her.  To their credit, I did, mostly.

We're both nineteen now.  I'm only a few months older than her, so I'm going to stop being a teenager earlier than she is.

Wow, that's depressing.

“Hey, what are you thinking about?"

“Wha-? Oh, nothing much, really."

“C'mon, Andre."

“Just about our birthdays. About how I'm gonna be twenty before you are.  It's a little unnerving."

She laughed that tinkly laugh of hers.
“And what about all the other birthdays you had before this? You didn't look this, um.... bad before any of them." She cocked her head to one side.

“Thanks, Veronica," I groaned.

She softened a little. “No, but all jokes aside, I'm serious. I have never, in my ten years of knowing you, seen you as dejected as this.  What's wrong?"

“I came home way after curfew last night, and do you know what my father did? He's grounded me for three weeks now, and I have to be home by nine now."

“This is a new development. What'd you do?"

“Nothing, I was just wandering around town with.... with, um, Mike and Cory and all those guys."

“You ran off with Cory, of all people? No wonder your dad was mad at you!"

“Just to make things clear, run off with sounds a little weird, and the last time I checked, Cory McHall was your boyfriend."

“I honestly don't even like him, Andre. I was just with him because I didn't want him to try anything on me. That stupid spoiled brat. I'm surprised he even graduated from high school in the first place."

“You know, if some of his gang happens to be hiding in those bushes right now, they're gonna rat you out real bad."

“Oh, don't worry about that, he already knows."

“What?"

“I broke up with him two days ago."

“Really? Why?"

“ He's too narrow minded to understand that you and I are just friends. What part of just friends did he not understand?" Veronica was positively fuming now.

*

(To be continued...)

The Wall: Part One

The Wall: Part One

Photo Credits: www.wikipedia.org and myself.

She stood in the darkness, alone, cold, and pale.  She wondered who was coming to get her out of this hellhole.

But nobody knew she was here.

They had taken her, taken and fled.  Then they had left her.  Alone, in the darkness.  There was no window in the room.  The room itself had a stone floor.  It was not warm.  The door had a dog flap; they gave her food through it.
She didn't know who they were.  She had given up asking questions a long time ago.  She never saw a hand give her food through the flap--only a plate entering.  They gave her water to drink in a small, sealed bag.

She had tried to escape once, but the alarm had gone off.  She had run outside, but she had seen only bright white light, and nothing else.
Nothing to figure out where they were, or where she was.
Nothing but piercing white light that made her think she was surely going to be blind.  But she had slowly inched forward regardless, and she had felt--bricks.  She did not open her eyes; she couldn't.  So she ran her hand along the bricks.
It had felt like a brick wall of some sort.

Then she had felt a pair of arms dragging her towards the room.  She did not struggle, she had nowhere to go.
She had been here for so long, she didn't remember anything about the world outside.

And now she had felt that wall.

Why were they keeping her inside?  Who were they?  What did they want from her?  Where was she?
Was something wrong with her?

Or was something wrong outside?



(To be continued...)





If you liked this, please check out some of my other work here!  Thank you for reading!

Slaves.

Slaves

We are all slaves, such slaves!
Slaves of the people we love,
And who act a certain way,
Not knowing they hurt us,
Because they don't care.
We are slaves, for we do not see any good
In trying to right their wrongs,
For we know their plates are full
With sin,
And if we make them aware
They will say something worse
Than what they already had,
And we are slaves, we are afraid
That we might bring upon them misfortune
And so we keep quiet
Not daring to utter a word
Held back by fear, helplessness,
And love.
Such slaves!

~Vruta Gupte.

Follow Your Heart.

So this guy got one of the top two places in a short story writing contest last year!  Hope y'all like it!

 

 

FOLLOW YOUR HEART

 

WHAM!

 

Amelia slammed on her brakes with a screech; her blue Honda Fit swerved violently before it finally came to a stop in front of the green traffic light. People honked behind her as she got out of the car. She ran to the spot where the cyclist she had just hit sat rubbing his forehead. A police officer stood next to him with a bottle of water.

 

“We’re letting you off this time, ma’am, but if it happens again, you’re gonna get a sure trip to jail,” the officer said, handing her a speeding ticket. Amelia fumbled in her purse for her wallet.

 

She frowned; she’d left it on the dresser. Again. She looked apologetically at the officer, who shook his head and turned away. She glanced at her watch: half past ten already?! She bolted to her car (which was pretty difficult considering her attire consisted of a floral skirt and a purple-and-green plaid coat), slammed the door, and stepped on the gas. Her boss was going to get really angry. She was certain he was going to fire her.

 

Over the past year, Amelia had been trying her hand at writing. One of her articles, titled ‘The Bush Effect', which was about the problems the former U.S. President’s ‘trickle-down’ policy had on the economy, had gone absolutely viral. It was so popular she even thought about leaving her job and devoting all of her time to writing. After that, she wrote a particularly provocative article about the White House travel office controversy; it was not well received, and editor after editor turned it down. Not one magazine wanted to publish her articles because they were afraid of getting kicked out of business. Gradually, she lost interest in writing, and after a few months she stopped altogether. Amelia was devastated.

She’d lit a matchstick in the fireplace and torn and burnt all of her manuscripts one by one—she could still remember the crackling sound that had ensued as they were reduced to ashes. Her brain told her to pay attention to her work, but her heart told her to get back to writing.

 

She had listened to her brain, and she regretted it, even now.

 

Amelia turned left. She could hear a cardinal whistling and the rustling of leaves. She stopped and looked long at the majestic red bird strutting across the branch of the tree, and suddenly in her heart she knew that what she had been doing all these days was simply out of fear. She’d stuck to what she was comfortable with, even though she knew it wasn’t right—for her. And now the universe was making her pay for it.

 

She parked her car in the lot and got out. She knew what she had to do. She walked

towards her boss’s office and waited until he opened the door for her.

 

“Amelia—”

 

“I know; I’m resigning.”

 

“What?” he looked shocked; he’d wanted to do the honours. “Why?”

 

“It’s too stressful in here for me....especially after last year. I’ve just realized I like writing more than sitting around worrying about money and credit. I’m not into this anymore.”

 

“Well, it’s your choice. Good luck.”

 

Two weeks later, Amelia was driving her Honda with the windows rolled down and the sun on her cheeks. She was finally back on track.

 

She smiled. She just had the coolest idea for an article!

*

 

Thank you for reading!  Please comment/ like/ share if you liked it.

Hasta la vista, amigos!

 



Photos