I ponder heavily,

My pen lies in

Assiduous wait,

Its nib protruding

Like fangs unleashed.

Strenuous contemplation takes over.

‘I am master of myself’, I thunder.

Why then, does my slave-engineered brain

Refuse to create?

Thoughts, ideas, impressions

Lie nestled in somnolent slumber.

Just visions loom large;

Lurid, prophetic, grotesque.

I await a divine afflatus.

Why don’t my literary foremothers

Collude with me,

Speak to me, from the turn of

Centuries?

Weren’t they too, cloistered

And silenced into a life

With no story?

But I do have a story.

I want to say it out loud.

Why then do my senses not obey?

Do they perceive me incapable?

I resolutely say,

‘Obey me pen! I command you.’

A hollow reverberation resonates.

I stand riveted,

My gaze arrested

By a ghastly image.

She looks at me plainly,

Dressed down demurely;

An epitome of doe-like docility.

But her eyes are aglow,

Burning in infernal glory;

Like a pair of torched houses

Squealing in silent anguish.

She stares at me through them,

A giant conflagration –

Mad, wild, deranged, desperate.

Thick wisps of dull grey hair

Crown her pale, wrinkled flesh.

Her furrowed brows

Twitch irritably.

She bares her teeth,

Rolls out her tongue

From her misshapen mouth

And struggles to render

Coherence to disjointed utterings.

I hear closely for she says,

‘I too had a story.

I too had a story.’

A gasp escapes my

Parted lips as she

Disappears into the

Recesses of the shadows

That conjured her up.

Aneesha Roy