The Raw me - As mystery unfolds

  This house still carries the rhythm of my hands. In its corners live the mornings I woke before the sun, kneading love into breakfast while the world was still asleep. I stitched years into school uniforms, packed courage into lunch boxes, and folded my dreams neatly between laundry and lullabies. Your father’s tired evenings rested on my shoulders. Your childhood storms found shelter in my arms. I was the quiet bridge between every argument, the lamp that stayed lit when darkness visited our doors. No one noticed how slowly my own seasons changed. How my laughter began to thin like fading ink. Now my voice echoes strangely in rooms I once filled with life. The same hands that held yours steady are waved aside like inconvenient memories. The same heart that carried you all beats quietly in a corner of this home. Sometimes I wonder— did my love become invisible the moment it became constant? Still, even through this silence, I cannot unlearn the language of care. Because a mother’...

I was born like a question no one wished to answer. A stubborn spark, they said— too loud, too certain, too unwilling to bend. When I walked alone through corridors of doubt, their silence followed me like a shadow. No hands held mine. No doors opened. No voices said you will make it. They watched instead— waiting for my fall to become their proof. So I built my road with splinters of refusal. I stitched courage from sleepless nights, from insults thrown like stones at my unfinished dreams. Every step forward was rebellion. Every breath a quiet argument against the world that had already decided my ending. And now— Now they gather like birds around sunlight. They speak my name with admiration, decorate my victories with borrowed pride. They say they always believed in me. But I remember the long winters of walking alone. I remember the echoes of empty rooms where hope was the only voice that stayed. Still, I do not carry bitterness. Because the girl who fought the world did not win to ...

  They folded your uniform with the careful silence people reserve for tragedies. A flag replaced your warmth. Metal replaced your voice. And everyone spoke to me as if grief might break if whispered to softly. But they do not hear the second heartbeat I carry. Your child turns like a small question beneath my ribs. How do I tell this life that its father became a story before it learned his name? At night I press your dog tags against my stomach. The metal grows warm between us, as if memory still knows how to breathe. You left with boots that promised return, with laughter tucked into the pockets of your jacket. Now the wind moves through the empty sleeves. They say you died for a nation. But here, in the quiet of our unfinished home, I count the smaller wars— a crib you will never build, a hand that will never guide tiny fingers, a child who will search your face only in photographs. Still, I whisper your name to the life within me. Because somewhere between sorrow and tomorrow,...

 The war does not end,  when the guns grow tired. It lingers in the cracked walls, in the silence of streets that once carried laughter. A rusted helmet half-buried in dust remembers a name no stone was carved to hold. Boot prints fade, but the earth keeps the weight of marching. In the quiet fields where bullets once argued with the sky, wildflowers rise without asking who won. Children now run through broken corridors, their footsteps echoing where commands once lived. War leaves no monuments as honest as its remains— a bent spoon, a torn photograph, a letter that never reached home. And somewhere beneath the growing grass, the past breathes slowly, waiting for the living to remember.

                                                                 I want to be loved the way jasmine loves the mango tree— not in haste, but by gently climbing into its soul. To flower together, to bear fruit together, rooted in purpose, soft with happiness. A love that is quiet yet alive, soulful in its giving, abundant in its becoming. Spreading joy without trying, offering shade, fragrance, sweetness to everyone who passes by. Caring for one another through seasons of bloom and fall, until time itself grows tired and lets us rest— still entwined. - *Chippy Mohan*

Last week I walked the windy, cold sea, My mind begging me to stay back just one more day. I did not want to taste a freedom I feared I might never hold again. Yet the moment I went, I stood still, facing the horizon, Thinking of a life, of a handful of people Who seemed to know happiness so naturally. Take me out— Of this quiet ache, this waiting heart. When waves kissed my feet for nearly an hour, Tears slipped through my eyes— Not knowing whether they belonged to joy or pain. Joy, for meeting a few beautiful souls, And among them, a brother. Three days— Brief, deep, unforgettable. Three days I will always remember. -Chippy Mohan