Creative Writing Prompt: Explore something you’ve never said aloud

In the shadowed corridors of a neglected childhood, the echoes of pain linger, manifesting in ways both subtle and profound.

Like pinches from La Tia when you raise your voice at church or stinging slaps from your father who doesn’t know

How to be patient with an immigrant child who has never seen US appliances.

It’s a story I know all too well, a narrative spun from the threads

of a past that refuses to remain silent and pushes my body

to remember when my mind does not.

Back in time.

Back into a place I have long forgotten.

Yet the act of putting it all back like a construction gone wrong left crumbs on the floor.

De pan de agua. Soft on the inside with a hard shell.

I pick up the bits with a gnawing hunger.

Hungry to prove what went on, I pick up the bits.

Relentless, craving, I pick up some more. But when the picture becomes something, I don’t look.

But then I do.

Into the Devi’s eyes.

And a desperate plea rises within me to know that anyone will stand

by me through the eye of the storm. So I twist my attitude into a self-sabotaging test, pushing loved ones to test

their limits

to test if they’ll stick around – because deep down, a voice whispers no.

A voice tells me the devil won.

One day, I woke up screaming because the devil looked at me and told me to hush.

To be quiet porque de eso no se habla.

The murmurs of the past surround me, and I realize they never left me.

They were always there.

They were memories etched on my skin.

One day, the devil won because I pushed everyone away.

The paradox of loneliness in company is hard to understand, but let me give it a try.

When surrounded by people, an overwhelming sense of isolation takes hold of me, as if I’m an alien in a world of humans.

Once, I had a green card that said alien on it, but I never thought I would feel like one.

I always thought que solo me iba disfracar como una mientra vivo en Nueva Yol, pero en realidad soy yo, no una alien.

So the paradox goes like this: I am not content alone, yet being with others feels como uno se esta ahogando en un charco.

It’s like standing at the edge of a chasm, never daring to cross.

I crave a middle ground, a balance.

¿Pero que eso? ¿Ahi balance de verdad? Yo, creo que eso es una mierda, de las gentes ricas that makeup shit so poor folk can stay busy working towards impossible dreams, and we won’t see that the problem is the rich.

Y mira yo con un monton de gente todavia me siento sola. ¿Y que es eso? Tengo que estar loca.

It’s weird because I am surrounded by voices and laughter, pero nada me toca como el MC Hammer.

Pero eso es desde pequeña. No Es nada nuevo. I built walls so tall that not even I could climb them. And that’s the thing, now I am stuck.

Y se me olvido decirte pero, la ultima vez que vi el diablo, le mire los ojos, y sus ojos eran los mios.

Note

I want to let you know that when I write without any constraints, it often comes out as a mix of Spanish and English, which I call Spanglish. I believe it’s because my brain processes information in both languages. Recently, I used this technique to process some of the trauma that has been with me since childhood. Some of these writings are still in my journal and may not be made public, but I’ve been doing this since I read The Body Keeps The Score and wrote The Devil That Haunts Me. Writing is therapeutic for me, and I don’t know when I’ll run out of traumatic experiences to write about. However, if you stay connected, you’ll be the first to know. I hope to write a sweet small-town romance someday, but for now, I’ll stick to sharing my realistic yet fictional stories for young readers and adults.