Author: Khushi Chandak, Class X C
I drift from the nest of my yesterday,
Where walls once whispered my name.
“Must you leave us?” they pleaded softly,
Soft hands of comfort tried to hold me,
Yet I longed for a brighter flame.
I traded the hush of familiar skies
For roads that echoed with the unknown.
“Do you know where you’re going?” they asked.
“Forward,” I whispered ; heart unarmed, yet fiercely burning,
Dreaming of a future to call my own.
I carried hope like a fragile lantern,
Through storms that silenced my song.
“Will this light be enough?” my spirit trembled.
Every step a bargain with the present,
Every joy I left felt wrong.
And when at last the horizon opened,
Gold crowned the towers I had built.
“You’ve arrived,” the world declared with pride,
But I touched the dream I bled to nurture,
And my soul lay heavy with guilt.
For what is triumph, if not borrowed,
From the tender hours I could not keep?
“Where are the voices you left behind?”
The laughter I left, the love I buried,
Now haunt my victories in sleep.
I fled my home to shape tomorrow.
“Did tomorrow welcome you?” they asked.
I lowered my eyes and could only whisper,
“Tomorrow was never mine to claim ;
I traded my present for shadows of time.”
As I see the scenery in front of my eyes,
All that I loved now haunts these silent hills,”
I stare into the hollow,
A silence deeper than the mountains,
A shadow heavier than the skies.
The wind asks me questions I cannot answer,
The trees whisper names I once knew.
“I traded warmth for dreams, only to find joy left behind,”
I reach for the echoes of laughter,
But only the hollow reaches back too.
As the setting unfolds before my eyes,
I gaze into the void, time sliding form my hands
The echoes of the lost whispers creep back,
Behold ! Now I see I have wandered into a future
That was never meant to be mine.
