Author: Sovira Lal, Class X D
I set the table just for three,
Mom, dad, and only me.
No older hand to show me the way,
No younger voice who begs me to stay.
Life may be peaceful and the space is wide,
But there’s room for one more on my side.
No one to blame when things go wrong,
I shall hum my own two-person song.
They joke that I can never share,
But they forget that there’s no one there.
Though I stand alone in line,
Every step I take is always mine…
I laugh when they laugh, agree when they speak,
I follow them awkwardly like I’m part of the streak.
In the pictures I’m there, but just out of frame,
The ghost of the group, lost in the game.
Their references fly away, I just play along,
Like an echo pretending to know the song.
I smile on their cue, I clap to their beat,
But I’m not the one they’re hoping to meet.
I’m the silence that fills the cracks in their plans,
I am the afterthought, written in half hearted, faint hands.
They say, “We’re all friends,” with a grin so wide,
Yet I walk just beside them, not quite inside.
I’m always the backup plan when others bail,
The name they forget, the friend they fail.
Just a filler seat at a crowded table,
Present, polite, just available.
Not ridiculed, not shunned, just passed by with grace,
The filler that rounds out the friend-shaped space.
I am not part of their plans, not one they applaud,
Just someone they call when they’re feeling odd.
I wonder if they’d notice if I’m gone one day,
Or if I’d just fade in the usual way.
Still I smile, still I stay, still I try,
Hoping one day they’ll ask me why.
Why I feel like the puzzle that doesn’t fit,
Why I am the person they omit.
But don’t you dare think that this is the worst part,
It’s being with people who don’t know your heart.
