Apr 10, 2016 Original Poetry, The Daily Post
In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt: Misplaced
Misplaced – A (sort-of) Fairy Tale Poem
©April 1oth, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
She walked on to the cliff-edge sheer,
The slope to sea was steep.
She went to where the winds blew drear,
And fished in waters deep.
In waters deep she went to fish,
For she had lost her soul.
A witch told her, to get her wish,
She’d have to sing hers whole.
For long ago, she’d lost her heart
To a sailor lost at sea.
She wept, for they had grown apart –
They were not meant to be.
He’d toyed with her, and made her sick
With love that he’d well-feigned,
Then went away sans word, so quick,
She’d languished and felt stained.
Her soul had crumbled to a shell
And crawled away to sea.
Her body, to her, felt a hell –
She could not bear to be.
For all around her, people stared
And spoke in soft, quick tones,
For outcast she had been declared,
She was exiled, alone.
She fished by day, by night so blind,
She fished all summer long
Her soul was what she’d hoped to find –
She sang her lonely song.
She saw a strange new fish one day
With scales of silver-blue.
It sang her song, and bade her stay
To see her wish come true
So stay she did, and came one night,
By moonlight, she did glimpse
A shadow walk with step so light
From sea to shore, a nymph!
No nymph it was, but just her soul,
Which she had sought to find,
Come tripping over waves so cold,
And through her body twined.
She cried aloud in joy and pain
When united they did stand,
And then the waves pulled her again,
And soon they left the land.
Now, down within the ocean deep
There lives a strange new life
Resembling a girl who keeps
Her soul devoid of strife.
But when her memory is swirled
From ancient grief and pain,
The ocean comes to flood the world,
And hearts are torn again.
And those whose souls are oft misplaced
In those who break their trust
Are cast adrift, from life displaced,
Until they turn to dust.
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Submitting simultaneously to The Daily Post and to NaPoWriMo
Tags: #Displaced, #Heartbreak, #Loss, #Misplaced, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #The Daily Prompt, #TheDailyPost, fairy tale
Mar 9, 2016 Friday Fictioneers
Photo-Credit: Emmy L. Gant
Genre: Brutal Realism
Word Count: 100 words of text, exactly
Lone Trash
©March 9th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
I sit on the sidewalk in the rain, my mind an empty bin. I can barely move.
Ants bite at my veins. Spiders crawl up my spine. Last night’s dinner knocks at my throat. Gagging, I lurch up, and stagger along the street.
I was thrown out of the restaurant. I was being a jerk, I think. There are gaps. I cannot remember. There’s a haze that hangs over my mind when I try.
I’ve lost my job, my wife, my family, my home. My heart is as stone.
There’s a broken trash-can here. I think I’ll keep it company.
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Thanks to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields, Fairy Blog-Mother whom we love, and who hosts Friday Fictioneers every week! Thanks, as well, to Emmy L. Gant, for the haunting photo-prompt for this week!
Dec 9, 2015 Friday Fictioneers, Original Short Story
PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot
Word Count: 100 words of text, exactly
Genre: War/Ghost-Fiction
Doors of Deception
©December 9th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
Once, there was a house.
Once, there were warm, living people in this house.
There was a house, with warm, living people in it — now there is dry heather. Wind moans through empty spaces amidst iron scraps. Doors open into the wild, where the sun (or is it a small bomb, or an army Hummer?) shines, blinding me.
Beside it, offices go up, glass-blindingly oblivious to lives gone.
Wandering here, I wonder, Was it worth it?
A soldier steps out, points his gun at me, says, “Move along, citizen.”
I step through the doors, and vanish.
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Thanks, as always, to our Fairy Blog-Mother, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields (sorry I’m a whole week late with writing this one, since the new one already came out today!), for hosting Friday Fictioneers, where writers meet and write 100-word short stories based on photo-prompts. Thanks to Roger Bultot for the evocative photo!
Tags: #Loss, 100-word original short story based on a photo prompt, Doors, War
Nov 5, 2015 Friday Fictioneers, Original Flash Fiction
Wife-Earth-Mother
©November 5th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
I walked in her footsteps.
Grace had tended our arid acre of land, pouring her spirit into it. That which was infertile, she’d made fertile, and that which had died, she’d made live. For twenty years she grew corn, beans, squash, tomatoes, pumpkins, peppers – enough for our family of three. Her love fed and nourished us.
I had gone to work in the coal fields, and my lungs rattled and hissed.
My son had died in a war begun by evil politicians. Then, Grace died, heartbroken. With her gone, the land died. I was alone.
I picked up a shovel.
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(P.S. Thanks to Rochelle, our beloved Fairy Blog-Mother as I dubbed her, for hosting Friday Fictioneers each week. Thanks, also, to Connie Gayer …(Mrs. Russell) for her evocative and sombre photograph.)
(P.P.S I’m heading off to India tomorrow morning via Emirates, so I may not be able to read people’s posts today, unless I can find a few minutes (haven’t packed yet!). Please know that I will check out your stories, and respond to anyone who makes a comment at some point before next Wednesday!
Love to all, Vijaya)
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Tags: #Death, #Dirty Energy, #Life, #Loss, #Love, Climate Change, Original short story based on photo-prompt, Politics, War
Sep 22, 2014 Original Poetry
What Words?
©September 22nd, 2014
By Vijaya Sundaram
What words can we say
When a young person dies,
When anyone dies?
I’m so sorry doesn’t cut it.
Deep sympathies doesn’t, either.
The world rushes by, myopic
And meaningless,
While a mother and a father,
And a sibling or two
Stand, bewildered, static
Amidst a whirl of meaningless
Heartfelt chatter, while
The patter of feet
Come in and out,
And death stands
Eternally by their side,
Silent, spare, sorrowing.
Death comes with quiet foot
Or a skid of tyres
Death comes with a twist of fate
Or the twist of a knife
Death creeps up and stings
Or bites down hard
On a fatal vein.
Death blooms, red and angry
In one’s blood and slashes
Left and right, clearing a
Path only it knows.
Sometimes, there’s pain,
Sometimes, a flash,
Then, nothingness.
So, I imagine it.
What if it isn’t any of these?
What if it’s the eternal squeeze
Of life, oozing out toothpaste-like,
Pain so piercing
There are no words,
Just living it, crying,
Living the dying:
THAT has to be
The apex of agony.
Would dying be easy?
Would I want to go, unresisting?
No! I’d say, give me one more chance
Just one more!
I promise I’ll do it right this time.
And a remorseless Judge
Would say, Yea or Nay.
Of course, that’s if you believe.
What if you don’t?
What would you say, then?
Better to be scattered
Atoms of one’s self
Entering into the inmost
Secrets of existence.
I’d say.
Better to be photons
Better to become
Lighter than air
And ascend.
And descend,
And ascend again
And again, that ladder
From DNA to Death.
To feel is a curse.
Lift that curse,
I want to say, and yet,
I cling to it, for it
Is all I know, for it
Is all that any of us
Will ever know we know.
And so, we say,
I’m so sorry
Because, somewhere, hidden,
Our blood-cells know
About this remorseless
Yet familiar stranger,
Death.
And we grieve
For the living,
For ourselves,
Once the dead
Have fled.
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Tags: #Life, #Loss, DNA, Dying, Living, photons, Words in the face of Death
Feb 12, 2014 Original Short Stories
Guitar
(See story prompt below my story)
©2014 Vijaya Sundaram
February 7th, 2014
Being a single mom isn’t bad, thought Swapna, riffling through the shirt-pile. I get to choose anything I want for Santosh. Luke can’t stop me. Luke, who had controlled her every move, and whom she missed, despite her relief when he had left her and their son.
Don’t remember!
She moved on to a Spiderman-themed sleeping bag. Santosh will be thrilled with this!
She approached the man at the garage door.
“This is great – your son must be too old for it now, huh? I don’t see a tag. How much is this?”
“Five,” he answered, turning to arrange something.
Inexplicably hurt, Swapna shook herself.
“Could I leave it here? I’m still looking,” she said.
“Sure,” he replied.
She moved around, found a red, unscratched Schwinn bicycle. Fifteen dollars! She wheeled it next to the sleeping bag.
The man was watching her. Watch away! she thought.
Then, she spotted the guitar, leaning against the garage door.
“You’re selling that Gibson?” she asked, incredulously.
“No, I changed my mind. That belonged … Are you done?” he asked.
Curious now, she turned to open her purse.
Movement near the window drew her attention. Someone had sat down near a photograph of a teenaged boy holding the Gibson.
Silently, Swapna handed over twenty dollars, wheeled the bicycle with sleeping bag on it, and stashed both in her trunk.
As she pulled away, she looked at the man. He had picked up the guitar, and was holding it tight.
Her throat closed.
(250 words of text, including my name, but nothing else.)
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Story Prompt for the final session with Michael Downing:
There are two principal characters: A buyer and a seller. The location is a yard, the property of the seller, where that person is having a yard sale, a garage sale, some sort of home sale. How the buyer found out is … not really important.
This is the story of a completed transaction. Among whatever else the seller has on offer at this sale, you must name three items: a bicycle of some kind (something that has wheels), a musical instrument or music-playing device, and a sleeping bag.
What you know about the seller is that recently, within the last year, a child of the seller’s died. This stuff the seller is selling belonged to the child.
The buyer and seller have never met, and know nothing of each other. Neither the seller nor anyone at the sale mentions the child, the death or the cause of death.
By the end of the story, your goal is that the readers understand the loss of the seller brings us to this moment.
Limitations:
Past tense
No more than 250 words.
Third person limited to the buyer. (the only omniscience belongs to the buyer – third person, however).
Tags: #Loss, #Original Short Story, Buying and Selling, Father and son, Garage Sale, Guitar, mother and son, Story Prompt by Michael Downing