I am knocked for six by the support, the messages of encouragement and the amazing feedback. The irony to be at a loss for words has not escaped me. You have all driven me forward to continue and I apologise for any rules unwritten or otherwise that my nascent scribblings here have broken. My work 'tongue tied' has drawn attention that has overwhelmed me and I cannot begin to describe how it feels that a short story rejected 20 times by publishers is now enjoying being read by others for the first time.

Be that as it most wonderfully may,

I must insist on a disclaimer:

Although inspired by my parent's cultural background and some of the tribulations they encountered while I was young, 'tongue tied' is entirely fiction. It has pointers of family history for absolute sure. It is in the first person because of how much I share with the protagonist. However, My French African father is still alive. Although he was forced to leave us for work when I was a child. The muteness is a metaphor for my profound dyslexia which often crippled my ability to express while growing up. And? While I try to build words into fanciful structures I have never been an architect. My Indian mother is a vibrantly strong woman, even today, and although I remember the taunts we received as a family as if etched on my heart, I have never bitten the hand of anyone to protect her which is why I developed my little hero (I have at aged 9 pushed a boy who called her something I will not repeat now. Oh yes, I pushed him to the ground.) What an amazing community Prose is and to think you all a serendipitous Google search almost upsets that I did not discover earlier.

I hope all who read 'tongue tied' do not love it less but do now understand me more.

Thank you

DG

Lonely is the invisible wall that always stands between you and the strangers in the crowd, the flood of their voices that, deafening, becomes less than silence when a thousand million words of someone else's stories mix and become nonsense.

Alone is the quiet calm darkness that is brightened by her day, when, somehow, even though she is halfway around the world, she speaks to you in silent words, and in the stillness of the five a.m. black bedroom you are able to lose yourself entirely in the whiteness of your screen, in the messages she left you, a beacon that shines with borrowed light, light that worms its way into your heart and makes you warm.

I am water,

tap dancing on souls

with ethereal feet,

flowing through veins,

moody and reckless.

Permeating layers

of skinned stone,

plunging membranes

of crystal water.

Moving like silk

through rumpled sheets.

Slow and sweltry tenacity

increasing to throbbing,

fingers of water

urgently touching

dry, fiery river bed.

My flooding waters

can create or destroy,

every drop of me

is your life,

shimmering spirit

of hope.

Turbulence,

racing blindly

in thirsty gulps,

splashes of fine mist

swimming onward,

puddling on skins.

Vagabond drops

of water meandering

boldly to the sea.

I am not the mask of makeup I wear

I am not the style of my hair 

I am not that voice whispering to end it here.

I am the choices that I make 

The hearts that I break 

The things that cause my hands to shake.

I am the words that I speak

The whispers of the trees

The sound of falling leaves.

I am the music I sing when I'm alone

The words I share with only my phone

The pain I felt with every broken bone.

I am each freckle and scar upon my skin 

The love I carry deep within 

The joy I feel when I'm with him.

I am the places I've been to

The people I thought I knew

The feeling I get when I'm laying next to you.

I am the weight on my shoulders

My faded band shirts getting older

That feeling when your heart grows colder.

You see, I am not what they believe me to be

I am not my own worse enemy 

I am not the pain that eats at me.

Because every day, I get out of bed

When I could just give up instead

And though I may get wrapped up in my head

I am still here

;

That's a piece of advice I've heard pretty often. Similar in frequency to the other dreaded one, "get married and settle down." 

Well, for one, I don't really believe that one needs to be in control of one's life. I mean, sure, control freaks do better in the worldly ways - money, marriage and the works. And yet...

Wondering what I'm blabbering?

See, I don't know about you but I'm a firm believer of Shiva, the most powerful Indian deity or God to be specific, and I believe he has things already placed out there for me. I  just need to rummage through the slush pile or in more sophisticated words, find my treasure through the hunt. Now, the hunt need not be very well thought out or planned. No plan means no control. You just go with the flow discovering clues along the way and hitting jackpot in the end!

(Please don't get hung up on Shiva. It's a belief system, and I believe in Him. You could simply believe in life itself, or not!)

I've done a great many things in life and I'm still some distance from "arriving" in life. But, I don't care so much. I care more about the "discovering clues" part of the game and discoveries can neither be planned nor can they be controlled.

So, if I were to say who or what controls my life; I'd say Shiva does. In other words, life controls itself.

Summer rubs me the wrong way

like two sticks rubbed together creating friction & heat.

Or when I rub the cat's fur the wrong direction

sticking up in an angry arch,

as just like the cat I scratch at the door to go out,

but immediately want in again.

The hot exhalations of the desert sun

feels like the devil's breath on my cheek.

A taunting, teasing, you can't go outside

and play.

I turned up the heat, I own this day.

Inside I walk the walls like a spider

my mood venomous and quick to bite.

Alone, isolated by the heat, desert houses

are like islands inhabited only by the lonely.

Too hot to drive anywhere.

Burnt butt and back thighs on leather seats

only to peel your damaged skin from

where its suctioned in.

One of the best ways to cope with the summer breeze:

don't think about it. Ignore them annoying bees that

buzz around, fat bodies going

when they really shouldn't, they're too heavy. I'm unknowing

of those bright, teenage smiles that light up the sky

at night, slamming bumper cars and kareoke while high

those naive feelings that one should love--

those warm, cleansing showers that suicide from the clouds above;

those cheap dinner dates and catching feelings in the shade

those long car trips that I usually crave and those

rushed, flighty feelings that come with a first kiss

experiences that I know that I will truly miss

when everything fades now in this dark house and picnic ants

turning over, belly-up, when our little hearts can't

take anymore of those cushy hugs and sad songs

dozing off in the background like "You're dying;" my heart longs

to be with you, down the avenue at the bus station

run away with me, I feel awfully impatient

I can't deal with these words: "Alone... Depressed,"

this summertime sadness that constantly goes suppressed

and suffocated by forced smiles at the Fourth of July cook-out

maybe its the way that God tries to shout out those

unshed tears, the dam is ready to burst--

you should know those snapped 

heartstrings over late texts are hard to nurse.

Chapter 01 

Countless people stumbled alongside each other at the Subway station, scampering towards their destinations. Eager to head back to Manhattan, I boarded a metro and sighed when I finally found a seat that wasn’t taken. All the poker-faced strangers surrounding me had their eyes fixed on a mobile screen and their fingers incessantly tapped buttons. Laced with boredom, I adorned a pair of headphones and swiftly bobbed my head to the mellifluous music.

My eyes wandered to the seat next to me which was vacant yet, occupied. A spiraled, green-hued journal was seated gracefully next to me. As curiosity overpowered me, I grasped it with cautious hands and softly flipped it open. On the very first page, a name, Regina Clay was scribbled in cursive. The more pages I turned, the more secrets of Regina’s life were unveiled.

I discovered that she was from Brooklyn and was dating a charismatic man named Mason. Immersed within the pages of hastily written anecdotes, I had almost forgotten that it was time to disembark at my station. Swiftly, I navigated my way through the overcrowded building with the journal clutched within my hands; for some peculiar reason, I had refused to part ways with it. I had never fancied being an eavesdropper or an intruder but, reading this journal unleashed waves of emotions I didn’t know I had and I felt inspired after a long time.

I had been struggling with writer’s block for a few weeks and I desperately looked for stories everywhere I went; this journal filled me up with the creative energy I was lacking. Everything that Regina had written was accompanied by an enigmatic metaphor; honestly, I was thoroughly enjoying reading about her day-to-day ordeals and her infatuation with Mason.

As I turned a page, a polaroid photograph slid out. A brunette girl with gleaming, green eyes who seemed to be in her mid-twenties smiled sweetly at the camera, holding a giant teddy bear. I flipped the photograph overleaf to find a few words scattered there, “Valentine’s Day present, 2013.”

I continued to read until I had to surrender to my drooping eyelids. A dreamless sleep enveloped me and I slept until the alarm clock piercingly cut through my peaceful slumber.

With a brewing cup of coffee and a pile of unread newspapers, I sat down at the kitchen table; this was my mundane morning routine. Sipping leisurely, I read the headlines and a particular one caught my attention: Brooklyn girl still missing, no clues found yet.

Underneath the headline, there was a picture of the brunette girl I had come to know as Regina Clay. Speechless, I hurriedly swallowed all the words from the article and learnt that she had been missing for nearly a week now and even after thorough investigation, they couldn’t find enough clues to trace her location.

Numerous questions circled back and forth in my mind as I wondered how her journal ended up in a metro and where could she have gone? Did someone do this to her? This case was overflowing with riddles.

Distracted by Regina’s mysterious disappearance, I couldn’t concentrate at work the entire day. My desk was cluttered with a truckload of paperwork but, it all seemed like a static blur to me as I continued to comprehend the newspaper article. I spent my lunchtime studying the journal; she was extremely happy when she wrote these diary entries and as I proceeded, I noticed a gradual change in the way she described Mason.

Until the last three months, she loved Mason unconditionally and never questioned his actions but, in the more recent entries, her perception of him wasn’t as rose-tinted. Her writing reflected the doubts she was having about their relationship and how insecure she had been feeling. With each day, her elation faded and the smiley faces she used to doodle vanished completely from the dog-eared pages of the journal.

Her love for Mason dwindled with the ceaseless clockwork but, I couldn’t figure out what exactly he had done. Since, I had deadlines to meet and columns to write, I put her journal aside and began working with my mind wandering elsewhere.

When my workday finally came to an end, I hurried back to my apartment and got engrossed once again in the journal. She had scribbled about bruises and scars on numerous pages; talking about how some wounds never turn brown and being heartbroken. I traced her mood with each word and it had only continued to deteriorate. Her writing was woven with metaphors and I couldn’t decipher whether she was talking about an abusive relationship or emotional scars; either way, it seemed like she desperately needed help but, nobody reached out to her.

After surfing the internet for a while, I learnt that the investigators still hadn’t found any concrete evidence that could lead them to Regina and today marked nine days since her disappearance that has left the police clueless. My heart clenched guiltily and I debated whether I should move forward with the journal and hand it over to the police department but, since they don’t have a single clue about this case, the suspicion might get thrown in my direction.

Bewildered, I ran a hand through my hair and tried to look for more information. All the websites told the same tale over and over again and it seemed like I had more information than they would ever be able to gather. Something written in this journal will be the answer to this riddle; I just have to look for it through these words.

The tumultuous transition from love to hatred for Mason made me wonder if he caused Regina’s disappearance or harmed her in any way. Maybe they had an argument that shaped into something bigger, he was overcome by rage and he mistreated her? Multiple websites came up with their own theories by using the scraps of information about her whereabouts and some even suggested that she was no longer alive.

As breeze fluttered through the windows, the pages of the journal swayed along with it. The last page was invitingly spread before me and it was paired with a photograph. A dark-haired man adorning a turtleneck with a pensive face was posing for the picture but, there was a scarlet cross mark etched across the photograph and this deeply puzzled me.

A line scrawled in crimson ink underneath the picture caught my attention: I used to sleep next to him each night now all I have left of him is his bloodstained jersey and his bloodcurdling screams echoing through my ears.

................

Description 

Title: Regina’s Journal

Genre: Mystery/Thriller

Age Range: For teenagers and adults

Word Count: 1,107 words (1st chapter)

Author: Ria Chakraborty

Why It Is A Good Fit: This mysterious story is accompanied by numerous twists and turns which will make it enjoyable.

Synopsis: An enigmatic journal is discovered on a metro which might have the answers to the questions related to a girl’s disappearance. In this puzzling case, countless pieces are missing and searching for them is the herculean task that Alan has unintentionally taken up. Will he be able to connect all the dots?

Writing style: I am fond of writing fiction and poetry.

Oh I want to taste you, I want to taste every bit of your soul and your mind. 

To taste the strong and subtle flavors that create who you are. 

I want to feel your fingers against my skin, asking for the taste of me. 

I want you to taste me, taste my words and my thoughts, the sweet drops of honeyed happiness and the sharp metal of my anger, like blood split in your mouth. 

I want to be tasted til you are intoxicated and stumbling, I want to be tasted till you have consumed all that you can. 

After you have done this, I want you to leave. 

If you have consumed all you can, then you have only tasted my shallow end. 

If you set limits on me, then you have tasted the sweet simmer but not the citrus boil. 

I can revoke your cup as quickly as I have given it to you to drink from. 

You have given nips of the rue and not the gumbo. 

Blessed with the sips of nectar but not the wine. 

I will leave, but I find myself staying. You no longer wish to explore my ocean, only remain lulled in it. Don't you know I am just as unpredictable as I was in the beginning, I am not suddenly settled because you think you have captured me like a sea nymph and chained me to the rock of your comfort. 

I wait, because you have not tasted the depths of me, yet you no longer wish to experience the flavors of my being. I wait for the time you will reveal yourself unto me, and I will throw you up like the creature did Jonah on the beaches, and you will not be granted anything but the lapping edges of me. 

I will wait, as you have no formal binding on my wrists, but I will wait. And I will sink you and drown you because you are so like the others, they drank until drunk, but did not thank the vine or the fruit. 

Sometimes we need to cry. So don't hold it all in.

Sometimes we just need to allow our walls to break down. And we need to sob our hearts away.

So don't keep those tears locked away. Release those chains that hold everything tight. And cry. 

You are never alone.

I'll hold your hand. And I'll cry with you. 

❤