Author: Sovira Lal, Class XI C
After everyone left,
the garden kept growing.
The gate slowly rusted
reddish-brown, brittle.
The swing forgot
the weight of children.
The windows gathered
a thin skin of dust.
But beneath it all,
the jasmine crept up
the old wall,
as if it had never been told
that the house was empty.
Moss covered the stones.
Grass entered
through the cracks.
A little orange flower
appeared beside the doorstep
where someone once waited.
No one came
to see it.
No one took a photograph.
No one called it beautiful.
Still
it opened.
Perhaps nature has never understood
our obsession
with being witnessed.
Perhaps beauty
was never meant
to be proof of anything.
Perhaps the garden
was not abandoned.
Perhaps it was simply
returned
to itself.
