Author: Divyata Solanki, Class X C
They’ve all looked at the same moon
A thousand handprints on her earth,
The womb from which the unborn rise
And the tomb in which the dead sleep.
The echoes of war cries lost in her air,
The howling rages of the battlefield,
All dying in the stench of bloodshed,
Only to be reborn as her sweet spring flowers
On their graves.
From the ashes of the empire,
A mighty city shall rise!
The King’s face etched in stone once more,
Living until doomsday descends all over again,
The empire in ruins, the lineage,
Somewhere, glimmering and breathing.
A desolate hallway,
Portraits of the conquerors, the believers,
The inventors, the enlightened,
The reformers, the dreamers,
A cadence of stories,
A single heartbeat,
Bringing life to their sepulchres.
The same tree they worshipped,
The Sun they thought God,
The same rivers that once bore carnage of war,
Now a picturesque dream.
Sublime. How Sublime.
They prayed to the same sky that never answered,
The same stars, they wished upon,
Lived on the soil of their own kin, the ones they lay waste,
Destroying and creating, bleeding and healing,
Dying and hoping,
Amidst the wasteland, an epiphany blooms,
We’ve all looked at the same moon.
My daydream is my rebellion,
An escapade from the monotony of my own name.
I am not Amanda,
I am a traveler, seeking.
A mermaid amidst the languid sea,
A lonesome orphan, bare feet on sweet earth,
A stray, not quite, only belonging to the wind,
The girl running away to the forest every summer
Smelling of mildew and rot.
A lover with not a care in the world,
A poet with dreams unbridled.
I am not Amanda, a troublesome girl,
I have walked the Earth,
I have been every person,
Confided in every soul,
Yet, I still go to one of our favourite haunts
By the rocky cliffs,
Drowning out your words, into a melody,
And I scream my throat raw at a God who isn’t listening,
Why have I been everyone, everywhere, at once,
Yet I couldn’t find your love,
The way my thoughts found me?
There is not one thing you do not have,
All within arm’s reach,
So close, it is almost stifling.
Where is there to go, when you could simply
Dissolve thoughts into thin air,
As soon as the television flickers on.
It is the only light in your darkened room,
Illuminating your expressionless face,
Every week’s occurrence, now sitting with you, forgotten
On that yellow couch.
The channel changes, and the television’s whirring light
Sculpts your face, eliciting laughter, sadness and boredom
As if you are made of clay.
You sit still on that yellow couch,
Feigning life.
What of life? You wanted to visit the falls, the mountains,
The sunsets, go to the land of songbirds,
But then you remember, all the places you’ve already been,
In memory, in time, or maybe it was a television screen.
Your eyes are red, the clock is far off,
You forget time and sit on that yellow couch,
You can move no longer, the couch binds you to its very fibre,
Shallow breaths, twitching hands.
Your thoughts have abandoned you, amidst this barren land.
The yellow couch now wraps you, encasing you, gently,
And makes a coffin, the most beautiful kind,
A cocoon.
The voices on the television are closer than death.
And then the rueful angels arrive,
To serenade you, when you ascend to the heavens.
They open the cocoon,
Only to find the butterfly within, is dead.
