Betsy Jenifer (17)
Words
Her words spilled before she could stop them. They slipped from her mind each time her lips parted like sand through careless fingers and before she knew it, her thoughts were no longer thoughts but spoken words. Actions she couldn't ever undo or take back. Slipped sand grains adrift in the wind.
She wished there was some sort of a warning sign she could be aware of each time she came too close to saying something she would later regret ever saying. Some sort of an alarm or a protesting placard that her mind could hold up so she could notice it and press her hands against her mouth and murder those wrong words. Stop them from being heard, from crawling up her throat and sliding out her tongue.
Sometimes, she would come home and find a mess of words everywhere. Her words. The ones she knew she mustn’t have spoken. They hung from the ceiling in long strings, draping themselves around the ceiling fan’s neck like feather boas and festooning themselves around the living room like party streamers and paper chains. They tied themselves tight around the TV and her furniture like a snake ruthlessly suffocating its prey. They piled themselves in high stacks in her sink like dirty dishes and taunted her. And for fun, they sometimes hid inside drawers and sprang out unexpectedly to scare her.
But some of her words escaped. They leapt around her neighborhood playfully, spreading news that she didn’t want others knowing about. Escaped words were dangerous so they had to be found as fast as possible and boxed in. So, at night, after all the lights went out, she snuck around the empty streets in search of them. Sometimes, she carried a flashlight with her but that scared the words away so she learnt to walk bravely in the darkness. It was hard finding them. In order to catch the words, she had to creep gingerly in the shadows and snatch them from behind. Even the slightest sounds made them aware so many times that she had to approach them barefooted or on her tip toes, careful not to stir them.
After having caught them, she stuck them peevishly inside cardboard boxes and locked them in her attic.
Years passed. And now, she was running out of words to speak.
Once in a while, her gaze turned to the attic from where rattling cardboard boxes sounded eerily like mischievous ghosts running their fingers along objects. The attic was now filled with rows and rows of cardboard boxes overflowing with misspoken words.
Sooner or later, she would have to revisit the attic. Sooner or later, she would have to tear open those cardboard boxes and take a good look at all the words she had stowed away. It would be her choice to decide whether she wanted to form them into new words and string better sentences out of them, or spare herself all that trouble and reuse those same regretful words that she had once hated herself for.
Betsy is a seventeen-year-old artist and writer from South India. Her work has been either published or is forthcoming in magazines like The Tishman Review, The Claremont Review, Canvas, Polyphony H.S. and Alexandria Quarterly, among others. She is tall, lanky, and obsessive.
Words
Her words spilled before she could stop them. They slipped from her mind each time her lips parted like sand through careless fingers and before she knew it, her thoughts were no longer thoughts but spoken words. Actions she couldn't ever undo or take back. Slipped sand grains adrift in the wind.
She wished there was some sort of a warning sign she could be aware of each time she came too close to saying something she would later regret ever saying. Some sort of an alarm or a protesting placard that her mind could hold up so she could notice it and press her hands against her mouth and murder those wrong words. Stop them from being heard, from crawling up her throat and sliding out her tongue.
Sometimes, she would come home and find a mess of words everywhere. Her words. The ones she knew she mustn’t have spoken. They hung from the ceiling in long strings, draping themselves around the ceiling fan’s neck like feather boas and festooning themselves around the living room like party streamers and paper chains. They tied themselves tight around the TV and her furniture like a snake ruthlessly suffocating its prey. They piled themselves in high stacks in her sink like dirty dishes and taunted her. And for fun, they sometimes hid inside drawers and sprang out unexpectedly to scare her.
But some of her words escaped. They leapt around her neighborhood playfully, spreading news that she didn’t want others knowing about. Escaped words were dangerous so they had to be found as fast as possible and boxed in. So, at night, after all the lights went out, she snuck around the empty streets in search of them. Sometimes, she carried a flashlight with her but that scared the words away so she learnt to walk bravely in the darkness. It was hard finding them. In order to catch the words, she had to creep gingerly in the shadows and snatch them from behind. Even the slightest sounds made them aware so many times that she had to approach them barefooted or on her tip toes, careful not to stir them.
After having caught them, she stuck them peevishly inside cardboard boxes and locked them in her attic.
Years passed. And now, she was running out of words to speak.
Once in a while, her gaze turned to the attic from where rattling cardboard boxes sounded eerily like mischievous ghosts running their fingers along objects. The attic was now filled with rows and rows of cardboard boxes overflowing with misspoken words.
Sooner or later, she would have to revisit the attic. Sooner or later, she would have to tear open those cardboard boxes and take a good look at all the words she had stowed away. It would be her choice to decide whether she wanted to form them into new words and string better sentences out of them, or spare herself all that trouble and reuse those same regretful words that she had once hated herself for.
Betsy is a seventeen-year-old artist and writer from South India. Her work has been either published or is forthcoming in magazines like The Tishman Review, The Claremont Review, Canvas, Polyphony H.S. and Alexandria Quarterly, among others. She is tall, lanky, and obsessive.