Lotus

Denise’s Six Sentence Story word prompt – Detour

“The Lotus Award goes to Sage Holmes, CEO of the Detour House Women’s foundation.” Her eyes well up in a room full of standing ovation. She is wearing a white dress to receive this life time contribution award among a group of passionate servants who are just like her, spend their lives tirelessly fighting for women’s safety and providing a roof over their heads.

Thirty three years ago, she was one of those women, without a voice, drug addicted and worked in a brothel where she hardly saw any sunlight. There was this Salvation Army woman, chubby and always brought freshly baked cookies to have a cup of tea and a chat with the girls. Her smile was bright and her hugs were warm; she was hope and their only connection to the normality of the outside world.

“I am grateful for this acknowledgement, and I owe it to that Salvation Army woman who baked us cookies and always reminded us by saying ‘ God made you girls like Lotus, living in mud but as pure as snow.’ Thank you!”

Free Will

I look at lack
I look at abundance
My eyes fixate on lack
My heart ignores abundance
Lack brings its minions
My life is filled with dread

I am roaming amidst the crowd
with tall walls built around me
brick by brick from birth
I am invisible, miserable and unlovable
Living hell is the feeling of isolation
when surrounded by people

I pray to an unseen God
and wonder why He never responds
I guess
I chose not to see His existence
by my own free will
Or
I am testing Him to see
if He is who He says He is
Will He pursuit a lost sheep relentlessly
Will He kick down the walls to save me

Hindrance

I heard that you had been back to visit the old town where we grew up and shared our first secret. It has been years since I counted the seasons the pear blossoms covered the laneway to our sweet youth. You always picked the snow white blossoms out of my hair, and I always searched your soul from your dark eyes. Time was a forever concept back then. We were never hurried to grow up while we glued to each other. The Southern biting cold was our excuse to be skin close and breath mingled. I still remember the sweet green apple taste in your mouth.

I haven’t been back for years, probably since the day of your wedding. All I remember was my world came to an end that day. I can’t remember how I managed to sweep up my broken heart and keep going, how I made it to the city, how I started to be a different version of me who is a stranger to me till this day. People say love hurts. Perhaps I didn’t experience the hurt because love died.

The train is coming in eleven minutes. I need to get on this train to make it to grandma’s funeral. For the first eighteen years of my life, grandma was my rock and my shelter. I failed to visit her all these twenty years, and missed the chance to say goodbye. For that, I hate you. I hate your careless decision and it rob me of the ability to keep loving. This hurts. It really hurts. It hurts so much that I have to step out of my own body to avoid the pain.

The clock on the platform is counting down. I see a grown woman sitting alone sobbing. Her face is contorted by grief or pain which I can’t differentiate. She looks so small and helpless. The door opens. I get on the train and sit by the window, keep watching her. Soon she is fading into only a smudge. I wonder what is stopping her to board this train, and why she is so sad.

Goodbye

This is written for Denise’s Six Sentence Story word prompt – Confetti

We were so young.

It’s not our fault that
we didn’t have time
to rehearse life.

We didn’t understand that
stubborn promises were just a preface.

We loved so hard.

We were so inexplicable,
so endearing,
so annoying,
consumed by seven emotions
and six desires.


It was cold that day,
tears turned into ice,
snowflakes falling down
like confetti,
red-eyed, red-faced.

Tree and Paper

Living Poetry prompt – Tree

If only
you can see the future
You won’t get hung up
on wrapping your arms
around the memory
of your thriving youth

The old self you shed
pushing outward
to form calluses
telling the world
that you are wiser
by counting the rings
of your wrinkles

You never see the future
of your exhausted face
made into sheets of canvas
for beauty to take forms
pleasing to our eyes
and souls