Talentless Hack

1.Ballet

There's a home video of a brightly lit stage, filled with rows of little girls in sparkly, shiny tutus. The camera shifts its focus to an adorable dumpling, a roll of white encased in leotards. The recital goes well for a while. Suddenly, there's a loud crash, and a similar creampuff girl is seen stumbling at the edge of the frame.

The clumsy girl is you, and the one behind the camera, your dad.

Go figure.

2.Voice
All your cousins have been in choirs. Your friends do theatre, and glee club, and intermissions in school programs.

Like them, you love to sing. You have an entire repertoire that ranges from Broadway to Backstreet to Beastie Boys. You automatically sprinkle your conversation with lyrics. Alas, you are tone deaf, and people wince when you open your mouth.

In this, as in other things, you blame your mother.

3.Horseback riding
Some of your fondest childhood memories were going up north, and riding ponies (nags) while your parents followed in cars. Visions of wielding lances or befriending unicorns pranced in your head.

A few years later, as your father's face turned alarmingly red and he started gasping for breath, you found out why they needed cars.

And there went your equestrienne dreams.

4.Theater

Despite your (absolute)(deplorable) lack of singing talent, you have a streak of melodrama and flair for the fabulous. Sometimes, it comes in handy—you're a far better actor (LIAR) than anyone knows. But it's a sneaky skill that comes and goes, as you found out the one and only time you joined a drama club.

Under the hot lights, in front of your Mean Girls peers, you employ nothing but a deer-in-the-headlights gaze.

5.Painting
Of all the lessons, every summer, the ones that stuck with you the most involved pigment and paper.

Now, ink often stains your fingers, and the smell of acrylic has replaced bygone turpentine and coffee grounds. Every chance you get—which is now, once in every blue moon—you sketch and glue on makeshift canvasses.

Centering your soul on the brushstrokes.

She comes in colors

Purple rain

There was a cool shower outside, the kind that makes you crawl into your blankets and dream the afternoon away. In an effort to remain (semi-) productive, you power up your laptop and start reading your old stories.

Almost immediately you wince, and your fingers twitch, longing to delete the lurid manifestations of your younger self's fantasies.

The prose is so purple, you expect eggplants to start shooting out of the screen.

Yellow fever

Shivery hot, hot, hot.

Against your better judgment (lies–you have no better judgment), you watched “Ninja Assassin,” a film about a Japanese nin out for vengeance, played by a Korean popstar.

It was as you expected–stilted dialogues, wooden chemistry, and decent fight scenes. Still, you enjoyed it, if only for the Korean's pretty, pretty face and dynamite abs.

Damn, son.

Green Mile

As you drive home from school, you sing along with the radio. You giggle, snort, and yell out profanities. You snicker aloud at unknown Freudian slips, but when you tell the joke next day, you receive blank faces.

It's not easy being green.

White Horses

It's almost Valentine's Day, and you brace yourself for the Mushy. All around you, your she-friends giggle over their boyfriends, guys A-B-C, random encounters with the other kind, and the “sexy-eyes” technique, while man-pals talk of reservations, pretty girls on a Saturday night, sans the sexy-eyes technique.

You fail at love life.

Still, you console yourself.

Of them all, you're the only one who can still touch a unicorn.

Red Head

Election season is upon you.

Two years ago, you viewed the circus with a mixture of dread and exhilaration. With friends Left and Right (and those politically directionless), there were always clashes of colors and principles, with you splattered with the remnant pigments. On your part, you were steadfastly orange, slightly tinged with more vermillion.

Now, you look around and see blue. Blue alumni, blue parties, BlueSkies. And you are content.

But sometimes, secretly, your heart beats red.

Alter-Egos/ The Words I used to write

1. Tuathanidana (Lj)

As a kid, you had a borderline obsession with all things make-believe—primarily, the gods and goddesses of ancient past, and the soap-opera madness of their lives

Because of a sugar-induced script written with friends, a stuffed toy named Fero, and crazy prepubescent hijinks, you also had a fascination with purple cows.

And then you discovered your Celtic namesake, she of the bovine emblem, flamboyant following, and virgin status.

Kismet.

2. My Spazzy Girl (Xanga)

Everyone who has watched the movie said they saw you. When your coach handed you a copy of it, you decided to take a look. Promptly, (a whiter, prettier, thinner version of) you show up on screen, drunk and demented in a subway station.

Since then, you’ve watched her every movie. Since then, you’ve cried at her every movie. Still, that first film stuck, of a lonely misfit driving people crazy.

Just as silly, you’re keenly aware you’d do just the same thing.

3. Silverfoil (Tastyword)

At the height of your delusions, you imagined yourself winning competitions, getting plaudits from people worldwide. But even as you imagined that Olympic medal, your fantasies were satisfied with second place.

You also started a private, utterly secret account, wanting to be known for your rapier wit and brilliant insights into love, and life, and beyond, rather than open only to the usual family and friend.

The blog didn’t last long.

Neither did your dreams.

4. Summer Fling (Blogdrive)

There are movies wherein a girl goes on vacation, falls deeply in love in some exotic locale with some exotic local (preferably rich, tall, dark and handsome), and the local reciprocates in kind.

Alas, that has never happened to you.

But hope springs eternal.

5. Drabble Diary (Blogger)

Latest, greatest, most pretentious.

Searching for Ever After (or, why Disney has ruined my life)

Sleeping Beauty

There is one blinding instant of pain, so unlike the prick of a needle, which then dulls, bit by bit, to a pale shade of agony. The wound never shows through your skin, and so no one ever kisses it to make it better.

And so instead, the morning comes. The world itself is an endless dream, and the thorns are covering you, bit by bit.

The voice begs you to wake up.

Cinderella

It’s a frequent daydream, that masked ball. All conversation stops, and their eyes as one rest upon you. A path is made, and he walks toward you; you feel the heat of his hands through the silk. In perfect silence, you dance.

But the scene changes, to just you and him, and as the clock strikes thirteen the gown vanishes, leaves you as you are, in jeans and a wrinkled blouse and with panicked, forlorn eyes. The world falls down, and eternity shines in his hand. Then he pulls you into a silent, perfect dance.

Long live the Labyrinth.

Snow White

Growing up a kid with a paler complexion than most, it’s no wonder they started calling you that nickname. It did strange things to your sense of beauty, especially when you found out that one incarnation had a sister.

Princess fair, white as a sheet, flight over fight, passive and menial, blood and lips, sleep and death.

You would have preferred to be Rose Red.

Beauty and the Beast

Upon seeing a picture, your mind goes several ways.

You can rail at the blatant typecasting (the ignorant villager as the villain) and bemoan the evils of the bourgeoisie while sipping at your Starbucks and typing at your Mac, and this is why you can never have a boy with like passions or background.

You can sigh at the golden dress, the pretty ballroom, and plan the dream proposal, and this is why you’ll never click with a man that isn’t gay.

You can hold the supposed intellectual standard to you heart, and this is why—

OMG FURRIES.

The Little Mermaid

If you should turn to sea foam, so be it.

As long as the right person kisses the girl.