I tried to write. But I couldn't. It just seemed so unnatural, so unreal. It felt like I was living with a broken spine. I tried to write, but it seemed as if someone took away the vocabulary that I had earned myself, snatched it and threw it away, far and far away. I tried to write, but it felt like I lost my will to bleed words and paint a beautiful picture with it. It felt like I forgot how I used to weave sweaters and mufflers with my words and provide my warmth to people who read it eagerly, just like having hot cocoa on cold winter mornings. I felt incomplete when the spark was lost, just like how your vanity case is without your Russian Red lipstick and your beautiful face without winged eyeliner and a blush that contoured your face. It felt like someone I loved so dearly stripped me off my clothes and show cased me out in the open for the world to see. A feeling so helpless and useless, I'd start to feel like the trophy wife that the billionaire across town possessed.
   I tried to make sense of the gibberish that I did end up writing, but it seemed so alien, so foreign, and as familiar as a person in the Saturday evening markets.
   So this was me minus you. A collection of flesh and bones, a hollow, but beating heart and an empty soul.
   This was me minus words. A hand that forgot to dance with a pen and paper. A stomach that did not flutter after seeing black ink on white paper.
   Me minus everything I loved, maybe still do. A mortal as insignificant as the moss on the rocks by the river.
   The world minus me. It hardly makes a difference.
   Or does it?

Invincible.

   I was walking home, it was only 10:30 p.m. You and your friends were following me since the last 15 minutes of my walk from the station. I was scared, terrified, petrified.
   You were the gang leader. You came forward and touched me. You pulled me down, and at that moment, I swear, I knew that I was destined to drown. My body was covered, everything, except my face. It was only 10:30, not even that late. I was returning from my desk job, not even a party or a flash mob.
   Then why was I caught here?
   You touched me, I screamed. You tore me apart: My clothes, my identity, my soul. You had your time, and so did your friends, I was only waiting for my nightmare to end. I could see my dreams getting smeared with my own blood.
   My brother found me, broken, unknown, bruised.
   I'll never be the same again. I'm dirty, I'm dirty, in this fight I'll always lose. I'm dirty, you did this. I'm dirty, I hate you.
   A month and a half later, my soul isn't that broken, my heart still pumps my red blood, but you left me a conflicted contradiction, you burned me down till there was nothing left of me. Now I see me in my mirror. Who gave you the right to tear me, to burn my gold and cut the strands of history that made me?
   But slowly and steadily, I see that I'm still me, I'm still the shining gold that I was, and you didn't kill me. I'm not dirty, not a single part of me is. My scars are merely the pointers for the pain that I've buried in too deep to remember.
   You have no right to hurt me now, split, tear,  pull me anyhow. I, I shall rise again. I shall parade on the streets at 12 a.m. No, it's not my fault, it will never be. I'm my own hero. I will save myself. I am invincible.
   And you? You shall never tyrannize me again.