The arms around her, holding her as she unravels, are her own. Bare but warm, they attempt an assurance as faltering as the bones in her left hand that had shattered under the duress of a minor, accidental fall, leaving behind a prominent scar on the brown, imperfect tapestry of her skin. Her tears stain this expanse, leaving invisible indentations on it even as she curls more into herself.
Words are constants. Words are volatile. They are viscous and potent. Words hold worlds and not all worlds embrace your existence. Not all worlds are pleasant. Some shun you. Some break you. Some tear you apart till all that's left of you is a spectre of the vibrance you once were.
Words hold worlds and maybe some people just do not understand that. Or maybe their own banishment into the prison of such worlds give them the right to push her into one too!

The words that were said to her reverberate in her ears like chimes of temple bells to the holy chant of mantras. The curses, the accusations, they play on record and sediment within her. She sobs harder, unable to do anything but just that. She is so inadequate in her prowess that she cannot defend against the onslaught and it hurts so much. She sobs and sobs and it hurts and hurts. Turning her head, she buries them into her pillow, the only chest that has borne the taint of her tears.

At the end of it all, when the caress of comfort that once used to be a hug is given on her hair while she is presumed to be sleeping, it does not even amount to a second's worth of time! A fleeting moment yet she holds it in her memory to give more strength to her arms for the next time!

She remembers those nights, her head buried in her pillow and the bedsheets drawn to completely cover her while her eyes overflowed. She remembers yearning for an embrace and forgiveness despite not being at fault while she lay alone in her bed, staring at the light in the kitchen that was on, only to hear mumbled curses and disdain. She remembers lowering her eyes, tears filling them all over again, remembers the light being switched off, something that felt like the door being slammed on the face then and she remembers looking accusingly at the photo on her wall, silently pleading for it to end because she still couldn't understand how she was that wrong and detestable.

A string of such nights flash across her eyes like a film reel and she lets them play, sipping on scalding hot coffee while agony fills her just the same.
_

Fire and coal, the rage in her veins, the flames that burn through numbing agony and die down in the helpless shudders of a wrecked body. Her grief, so all consuming that she does not have the hearth where the embers of her rage can burn but her rage, primal, raw and so very feral that she cannot let it eviscerate. They clash vigorously till dusk sets, numbness setting in. She picks herself, her face bruised and lip swollen. She picks herself, blood staining her t-shirt and pajamas, haunting emptiness in the womb which has been wrecked. She picks herself and with a deep fortifying breath, she limps to the washroom.

One of the harshest things she has ever been told is the very pain she has given her character Abhira- the genesis of her existence that should have flowed away in carmine floods like the ones after her!
Over the years, there have been many times that she has agreed with it. Because like an echo in fractured crevices, like an untold but irrefutable verity, those dreaded words permeate her being. And when every day brings the same annotations of different words, how is she supposed to believe anything different?

It cannot be and for years, there was just heartbreak behind this belief. Now though, it is a different story!

Angry tears fill her eyes, the tears that have strayed only as far as her eye lash, never dripping down to ruination because she wouldn't allow it. She has never been able to allow her rage, her resentment and her bitterness to overpower her anguish because that would mean accepting that she had turned selfish. Because that would mean interference in the understanding that only she harbours towards everything that has shaped her mother to be such. Because she cannot allow it, cannot eradicate it - understanding the unsaid, lending a listening ear and a shoulder to lean on, these things that keep her need in her mother's view alive, because she will be nothing without it!
In the present moment though, her chest burns with a writhing flame that burns brighter with every contour of her bruised heart that it scorches and she lets these restrained tears flow free.
She lets herself collapse back and scream

"Why mumma? Why?!!"

And with that, she finally lets the brutally damaged inner child within her, let out her first heartwrenching cry of anguish!
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Love,
Pratyusha