Hi everyone! My name is Mahika Gupta, and I’m a film student at Freestyle Academy. Some of my passions outside of school include basketball (which I’m going to continue to pursue in college), watching movies with my friends, and playing piano and guitar. Freestyle has helped me develop my passion and skills in creative writing, which is why I chose two pieces of poetic prose for this showcase.
The first piece I chose is from the flash fiction unit from Junior year. I found my inspiration for this piece while thinking about the number of ways music has improved my life. I decided to make music the metaphor behind the main character’s struggle to seize control of her life and create her own happiness instead of constantly relying on others. I wanted to include as many musical metaphors and allusions as possible, so I settled on the title “Allegra.”
The other piece I chose is from the lyrical essay unit we did earlier this year. We were tasked with writing our own lyrical essays inspired by Claudia Rankine’s Citizen. I immediately knew what I wanted my subject to be because I had recently spoken with one of my friends who is half Mexican and half white, but a lot of people wouldn’t believe him because on the outside he just looked white. And so I interviewed him about his family history and the struggles he’s gone through with this atypical form of racism and wove together the lyrical essay, “Multicolored.”
I would love any kind of feedback/criticism you can give me on these pieces, especially having to do with the poetic flow and grasping the deeper meaning behind each story. What revisions would you suggest I make?
I’m excited to further my education in literature and writing at Colby College. I’ve also received a great research opportunity to collaborate with a professor as he works on a novel about the history of science denial, which is the perfect blend of both my intended majors.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read my work. If you have any questions, you can reach me at mahikasgupta@gmail.com.
Allegra
There she stood, in the midst of the barren, deciduous forest on a wintery eve. The little cookie cutter snowflakes dropped monotonously from the deep gray sky, embedding themselves in her bright, red hair. Allegra– the light of my life, the music to my ears.
There she stood, purposeless amongst the forgotten landscape. Her feet remained planted in the dirty snow as blankets of pristine white settled in and melded into the gray hues of the ground. Her carmine lips pressed in a thin line as her brain radiated black through her nervous system. She stared straight ahead with her empty blue eyes. Allegra– the light of my life, the music to my ears.
A flash of red disturbed the eerie monotony of the deserted basin as a woodpecker settled on a sickly branch that must have once been a deep, healthy brown. She focused her gaze away from the sickening uniformity of the desolate valley and onto the woodpecker with hair as crimson as she. She watched as it set out to work.
Peck.
Peck.
Peck.
She tilted her head as she let the beat take over– nature’s metronome filling her with the rhythm of life and of all things beautiful.
The previous emptiness of her eyes released a twinkle of blue light, coalescing with the playful reds of the woodpecker’s head to create an explosion of purple.
The now-indigo sky erupted with flurry after flurry of lavender snowflakes, as the woodpecker on the mulberry branch never faltered.
Peck.
Peck.
Peck.
She took a step forward in perfect tempo. She raised her hand, as if Gaia was at her beck and call, and listened. She listened for the priceless arias of the sky’s tongue, the gifts it sends down to the mere mortals back on Earth.
Peck.
Peck.
Peck.
Woosh.
In perfect harmony, nature’s tuning fork came whistling through the leaves, leaving behind traces of byzantine, infiltrating the indigo skies as they become brighter, warmer. She stretches her long, bare arm out to catch the iridescent snowfall, each flake a unique color, an exclusive chord all on its own.
Peck.
Peck.
Woosh.
Allegra– the lyrics to my melody.
Peck.
Peck.
Woosh.
Allegra– the color to my world.
Peck.
Peck.
CLANG!
Her hands dropped in surprise at the dissonant strike of a gong, ringing decibels with such sheer force that the red plume atop nature’s metronome turned an ashen gray. The violent violets were sucked into the blistering blues and disappeared with a sickening pop!
The monotone of the barren, deciduous forest was restored– the light sucked out of her eyes, the music gone from her ears.
There she stood, without a purpose, yet again just another tool discarded from the toolbox. With a heavy heart, she took a step forward.
Adagio.
The sforzando that interrupted the most beautiful creation would stay in her heart, forever and always.
Andantino.
The staccato opportunities, never letting in enough color to rid her body of the black sludge running through her veins.
Andante.
The inspiration coming and going as it chooses, never sostenuto.
Allegretto.
Because the legato melody can only come from within. The tune of her blood, the beat of her heart.
Allegro.
It can only come from within.
Con moto.
She breaks into a run, flicking branches out of her way that return green with her touch.
Con brio.
She opens her mouth and lets out a beautiful melody, returning the sky to baby blue and bringing the hummingbirds out of hiding to chirp the harmonies.
Con fuoco.
She leaps into the air, the fire in her veins restoring the black to blood red, melting the snow, warming the atmosphere with her presence.
There she stood, in the midst of the restored, evergreen forests. The bluejays joining the chorus of melodies as they sing to the rhythm of her heart. Her vivacious chestnut locks dancing in the breeze, her cardinal lips turned upward in a smile, and the calm, ocean blue of her eyes.
Allegra. The light of my life, the music to my ears, the fire to my heart.
Reflection
I always loved using flowery language in my writing but in the past it often held no deeper meaning. In other words, I wrote it because it sounded good, not because it had anything to add to my topic. However, this project taught me how to use that flowery language and turn it into something that could sustain the lyrics to a deeper melody. It taught me that you can spend countless hours on a single piece of writing and be completely unsatisfied, and spend no more than an hour on another and have it be your most favorite thing in the world (minus time for revisions, of course). Writing this piece made me believe in the power words could have, and so I submitted it to the Los Altos High School literary magazine where it was published last year.
Multicolored
A part of us is always asleep. When we’re asleep, we’re not in control. But we are in control. By the part of us we don’t always let out because it holds our unfiltered feelings, our raw thoughts. And this part of us comes out when we are asleep. When we walk around, forgetting to wake up our consciousness, unconsciously perpetrating unfiltered thoughts. But now, after a two hundred and forty-two year nap, it’s time to wake up.
Imagine you’re invisible. But you’re not invisible. You’re a vessel that fills with whatever the person looking at you imagines. Your true self lies in the eye of the beholder. It is no longer you who defines you but the observations of others. But you know that they’ll never see past your white exterior. They’ll never believe that you’re you, because to them, you’re white.
You’re from around here. Your parents are from around here. Your grandparents are from around here. Your mom is Mexican. Your mom is American. Your dad is European.
Where are you from?
You go to a family reunion. Your cousins are not white. Your cousins were raised with the culture from which they are from. They weren’t taught to change, but you were. They call your family the “white” family. They’re your relatives, but you don’t belong. You never did belong.
Where do you belong?
You belong in America. You are white, and people see you as white. But you’re mixed, and because it’s not reflected on the outside, they don’t believe you. Nobody believes you. You are racist for claiming your identity because you have white skin, not brown.
But your cousins don’t have that problem. People believe they are who they say they are. You believe they are who they say they are. But you stopped believing you are who you think you are. Because everyone sees you as different.
Why are you different?
First Generation
You were born in Texas. You grew up in Texas. But your parents came from further South and all of a sudden every word that came out of your mouth was an insult, making you the victim of an angry white blur. But you don’t know what you said other than “¿Como estás?” Maybe they just didn’t want to admit how they were feeling.
But the memory of fists leave thick white scars across your brain, a wound you wouldn’t dare inflict on anyone else. A wound that was justified based on the color of your vessel that people fill with words of hate and intolerance. Because they are scared of the unknown and you are an unknown, unbeknownst to them.
Because your name was ethnic. Because they were asleep, the unconscious harmony when the job you worked so hard to get rejected in the name of John Anslinger though you work longer and harder with less pay.
You name your kids Karen. And Shirley and Marilyn and Tom. Because Cecilia’s accent isn’t white enough. Because Roberto looks better as a Robert.
And as you leave them to enter the world, escorting a white woman, escorted by a white man, you lean back and think you’ve done it. You’ve beat your culture at it’s own game. You helped paint the vessels of your children white with the hope that with generations to come it will remain permanent.
Third Generation
It has remained permanent. In the color of the vessel that renders you invisible. Your ancestors have succeeded in making you invisible. A part of the crowd. White.
So you dress up like the walking dead, celebrating the dead, Dia de los Muertos, to prove you’re alive. But you get torn down for cultural appropriation, bone white of your skeleton. Because they don’t know you. They refuse to get to know you. They haven’t woken up yet. Not like you have.
Or that’s what you want to believe. They don’t know what they’re saying because they can’t control what they’re saying. Because you don’t want to believe that they know how it feels and they want to hurt you. And the fists that cut scars in your grandparents so long ago, the scars that opened up the desire to be white, have reopened brown, caramel, whatever color you should be if you want to be Mexican.
You don’t struggle to fit in. You’re accepted as white. But you know that’s not all you are. And though it’s easier to stitch up the scars, to cover them up and pretend that side of you doesn’t exist, you don’t. Because you’re proud of your heritage. You want to remember where you are from.
But the obstacles to acceptance threaten to become insurmountable. A wall erupts in your soul, tearing through your identity as you watch your family become victims of hate while you watch from the sidelines. You refuse to stand idly by because of the half of you that is torn apart by the other half of you. You know that all white people aren’t bad but they don’t. The rest of your family, the ones raised with caramel coated bones don’t bleed white like you did.
Middle Names
But there is a clear connection between the outside you and your culture. It lies just barely above the surface in your middle name. But nobody cares about middle names.
Nobody believes you when you tell them your middle name. Because when it comes to social reality, the person you think you are doesn’t matter. Only the person other people think you are.
And you realize it isn’t just your middle name that didn’t matter. You could have the most ethnic, Mexican name in the world and your skin color would still be the only thing that defined you.
Reflection
This unit overall was extremely impactful. The experience of reading Citizen by Claudia Rankine, the melodies of a black girl walking through a white society, was incredibly unique and hard-hitting. She wrote her lyrical essay in second person, which put the audience directly in her shoes, experiencing everything she was experiencing. After reading this, I realized that’s exactly what I want to do. I wanted to one day be able to write something in such a way that left the audience feeling like they momentarily stepped into the lives of another person and experienced everything that person did. The lyrical essay I wrote was very similar to Rankine’s in both subject and style, but I really enjoyed playing around with different sentence structures, sometimes using longer sentences to convey the development of an idea but then short, staccato sentences at the ends of those ideas to convey a point.
Poetry
I love journaling and writing poetry in my free time, and below is a poem I wrote recently, not for any Freestyle assignment. If you have the time and don’t mind, I would greatly appreciate you taking a look at this as well. Thanks!
Crescents
Crescents
Like the moon in the night sky
on the darkest nights
Like the red lines etched into her skin
combating the enemy lines
her nails as her shield
against the fog
shrouding her memories
as one by one they break through
but with one last line of defense to face
which succeeds in shattering all
but the essence
The remnants that seep through her blood
infiltrating her brain and her heart
suffocating her with memories unknown
and at the end of the day
it was her own army
her own defenses
that drove the blade through her heart.