Homecoming Reunion

A place where I once belonged

Photo by Mike Scheid on Unsplash

Returning home I feel like a tortoise retracting into her secure shell. I drive down the road leading towards my home, where I lived for most of my life and my heart both sinks and rises all at once. I sink because I used to know every rise and dip on the trail, yet no longer. To anyone else, this is a house like all the others beside it, but to me, it was where I once belonged.

I haven’t forgotten, it is the path that has changed over the course of time, due to footfalls and weathering. I rise to experience what awaits me at the end, a place of love, happiness, warmth and endless chatter, then I’ve had these countless days that have gone by like a zapping bullet train.

Come home, little flower, I hear my mother whispering. Come home and talk while we sip the tea of love, and laugh over our own silliness and talk heart to heart, and I will make the dishes like the way you relish it.

Why did we ever sweat the small stuff? Why didn’t we let go and enjoy the ride all along? Maybe it took time, to realize those were the best days we shared and there is no turning back. The joy still exists, but with a twist, we meet a couple of days a year now, once every few months, we look forward to, so be with me now. Stay. Pack your bags and come visit me and belong, or perhaps I will do the same as time passes by.

Photo by Calum Lewis on Unsplash

Come we’ll paint new memories of togetherness, and do things the way you like it. So come along as you are here I am happy, I am content. We all are here!

Now, everyone is out of their kilter, it is hard to believe, I’m no longer a part of the natural flow of their lives (my parents and my sister), and there is a deep longing and unsaid things, which leaves rustic memories lingering, like a scent of a sweet apple pie.

©Shweta, 2020. All Rights Reserved.

Originally published in I Challenge You. 

Memories - A poem

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

Learning to heal,
Learning to set boundaries,
it is just a process each learns
in the matter of time
to surrender and make peace!

Letting the experiences
spin a story, a safe cocoon for us,
memories slowly fade,
as each thread untangles itself
to fall away!

©Shweta, 2020. All Rights Reserved.
Originally published in The Cotton Thread. 

Season Replay - A poem

Photo by Dragos Gontariu on Unsplash


Once upon a time as a child was carried away
There was a time on a summer day
I was elated in a different way
Living life without a care
Hustling against the warm summer air
Dreaming life is a simple affair
You bring life, magic, and flare!

Spending days with ones I love
Thanking the stars up above
My summer days I always savor
But I had a school to must attend
Oh, summer! Shine…
Everybody depends upon you
See you soon, in heaven so blue
in ten months that blew!

©Shweta, 2020

Originally published in Blue Insights

Reflection and Reminiscence

I smell the distinct awakened memories, echoes of the long-gone days, the pictures of which are worn out, faded and damp, or perhaps some even crumbled. I mistook them as just memories, but these are what made me, me.

They might not be the fantastic ones or the worst ones, etching their impermeable marks on me. My reminiscing of these gently scented memories are beyond just the stills captured by the celluloid, unless I visit them time to time, to see how we all lived in the earlier years of our life, where there was so much of liveliness, attention, and connection deeper than just the hugs, storytelling or frivolous fights. It was in quieter moments of joy in kinship, saw the underlying true nature of my parents. I saw a childlike spirit in my mother and assiduous nature in my father, evolving each time. I want these, rather I need these memories to stay with me, to soothe me when bad ones threaten to erase the traces of the good ones. They are evidence of lively souls that belong together even when they faltered. They are extraordinary people with kindness and the best intentions I have known in my life. And who am I to judge? Life puts each one of us through enough stress, to change the best of us, even me, and even you!

Photo by sarandy westfall on Unsplash

©Shweta, 2020. All Rights Reserved.

Felling my Foe - A poem

Photo by Heather M. Edwards on Unsplash

Why engage in this malevolence?

lugging heaviness

in heart and cringe

I ignore, so do you

I evade, so do you 

faking smiles

pretensions

and 

small talks!

The heart knows and sees

furious is the mind 

It is time to move on

to let you go

because you are not worthy 

to risk the danger of you becoming a friend!

©Shweta, 2020. All Rights Reserved.

Originally published in From the Poet's Heart

The Other Woman

Photo by ian dooley on Unsplash

“Careful honey, the revolver is loaded,” he said as he made a drink for himself in a hotel suite.

“Is this for your wife?”

“No! I think I will hire someone to do that, do you know any hit-man we can trust?”

“Me?”

He smirked as he sat next to her caressing her back and taking a sip from his drink.

“I wonder who hires a lady hit man?”

“Your loving wife!”

She shot him dead on the spot.

“Oh yes, a lady hit man indeed can!"

©Shweta, 2020. All Rights Reserved.

Blinding Monotony

Photo by Nik MacMillan on Unsplash

Encased by the white tiles all around her, in an enormous room with so many washers, makes her weary. She shows up, each day, every single day of the year, at the same time and leaves at half-past five. She loads the insatiable machines, begrudging every minute lost. Sodden dresses, mismatched booties, soiled pajamas, red leotards, mud-stained soccer shorts, soccer-socks, pinafores, stained uniforms, skirts, jeans, sweaters, trousers.

Eventually, she dwindls her efforts, washing only max of two loads on a given day, and cudgels her brains speculating why her days are painfully long now!

©Shweta, 2020. All Rights Reserved.

Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this, explore my other poems/flash fiction stories.

Out of Ordinary - A Flash Fiction

Photo by Jp Valery on Unsplash

At half-past 2 a.m, Jen woke up and stumbled into her own bed. Normally Bruce came crawling into her bed at dawn, falling asleep beside her for a few hours. But this morning her bed was empty. She thought of food, before looking for Bruce. A remainder, her body worked hard, as she slept through the night. She heard a distant sound of his voice, a sound of cry broke out. Jen raced towards the garden where she was startled, to see Bruce had hurt his tiny fingers, trying to plant new saplings like her dad did, while he had visited them.

She realized, how helpful it was to have her dad around. Bruce spent time with her dad outdoors, playing in the garden and splashing water from the bucket, or searching for worms underneath as her dad dug up soil for planting. With someone to keep Bruce engaged until dusk, let her a lot of time to be alone. The me-time she longed since she had Bruce and with her husband traveling most of the time it was a far fetched dream.

©Shweta, 2020. All Rights Reserved.

A Phone Call - A Flash Fiction

Photo by Can Ahtam on Unsplash

The phone rang piercing through the stillness of the first flush of morning. Justin arises from the bed with a sudden pounding in his heart as his phone rings.

He knew it was his father before answering the call; there was no one else who would have called him before nine. He has not spoken to his father in several weeks. He was visiting his parents, his paternal grandparents back in Eswatini.

As he answered the phone, it left him scandalized and the phone hanging by the cord. He did not expect his dad to break such a piece of news to him. Justin’s thoughts take him down the memory lane to his mother’s loving memories. The wish for her to be here fills him with such rage and bitterness that his brain could explode. His dad called to tell him, he has a stepmother and a stepbrother who was about ten, fourteen years younger to him.

©Shweta, 2020. All Rights Reserved.

Magic. I'm aboard - A unique perspective on creativity

Photo by Pierre Bamin on Unsplash

Let me talk about magic in this creative world of writing, I have devoted almost my entire lifetime.

To begin with, the idea established itself in my head while I was occupied re-reading Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert.

Each time I read that book, I find some new thought transcending, a divine feeling towards creativity and commitment it calls for. Surreal energy making me write and motive me to continue on this path. Ideas too, have an energy and a will, to manifest, so they travel. They travel and pay visits to humans, who could manifest them as actual.

According to Ruth Stone — 
“Ideas are entering and exiting the human consciousness at whim”

I experienced an idea knocking at my door, waiting to be manifested, and left empty-handed!

Allow me to explain.

As I was scanning through Medium on a gloomy Wednesday morning, I stumbled upon a published article, an idea, which had knocked on my door about 8–9 months ago. Maybe as Liz says in the book, the idea waits only for a certain time, and if you don’t welcome it, it will find someone else to come alive.
I have believed in magic and ideas inspiring the writers or others who have set out their creative journey. But this has been the closest encounter of Magic for me!

An article, by Shaunta Grimes, also states, how important it is to stay available, letting your creative juices flowing, welcoming the ideas which need to be brought to life!

Ergo, stay put, make yourself available for ideas to come your way, build your ideas before it jumps out of your window into a new home.


©Shweta, 2020. All Rights Reserved.

Originally published in a Few Words.