you poured, regurgitated your tangled
thoughts while bombs infused the chilly air, quelling
romantic urges and wishing people could
read your mind. a survivor made sure your
powerful words did not die like your soul, that
the pages did not crumble to dust and fire did
not cradle your dreams.
decades later. gem-studded glasses with
weed in back pockets, images of nude celebrities
tucked away like golden leaves. your words, a
hopeful paean, feel their bare skin and pendulous
parts, while they sneer at you and wish your diary
had never been treasured. you are a girl. but now,
you are an assignment, not a fractured smile bound
into a legacy. in posterity, they laugh at your
desires, at the shard of pain, a yellow star in the
prejudiced skies. adults with gray lorgnettes and
a longing for solitude pace by, giggles are stuffed into
ripened pages, smirks are masked by a paltry
attempt at respect. your legacy, sullied by the
apathy of people who associate your name with
boredom. your soul, a menorah of faith in goodness,
is not the silvered memory it was born to be. your voice,
a shofar of youthful power, is not the sought out vocalization
it should have been. your words have become a classroom
monotony, people slinking other people’s answers
onto their tongues. better to remain forgotten and
protected, than snickered at by students who don’t know
the feeling of cherishing each day, grateful that you’ve survived
Richa Gupta is a seventeen-year-old from Bangalore, India. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of Moledro Magazine, and a poetry reader with Glass Kite Anthology. With an avid interest in writing and journalism, Richa is currently a blog contributor with The Huffington Post, Voices of Youth (a UNICEF-based platform), and Youth Ki Awaaz. She has been published in several literary magazines, such as New Plains Review, Yellow Chair Review, Foliate Oak, Poetry Quarterly, Apeiron Review, and After the Pause, among others. When not writing or reading, Richa can be seen playing the piano or day-dreaming.
–Art by Ashley Holloway
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