Sunday 22 November 2009

Discarded soles

She doesn't understand your looks yet

She can't decipher the meaning of that stare

 Your venom-coated words don't poison her

She doesn't yet know she should care

 

Her mother's somewhere nearby

Doing twice the labor for less equal pay

Little girl extends her palm experimentally

She doesn't yet know what to say

 

When she smiles at you

Her lips curl up all the way

She tears around barefoot

This child, she is happy today

 

As time passes, changing the world

Leaving the non-existent unchanged

She has changed, caught in a web

Her young smile now for ages caged

 

Her mother sees herself in her

And a thousand others like her in her (fallen feathers)

But acceptance is the family trade

Each one goes the way the other

 

What is a human not grown from a child,

A child that's a child for just a while?

She never grew up the day she learnt to beg

The child was vaulted the moment she knew

 

What you saw when you looked at her, looked at others just like her:

Inheritant filth, a different breed, unlike you, impure

The world's self-proclaimed humans acknowledge her not

Surely, well-justified scorn, indifference is the cure

 

Today it rains, pours; the skies release their elixir

Finicky, run for cover, leather soles ruin in water

She remains in the open, her non-existent soul sighs

The little girl peeps from behind clouded, clueless eyes

 

Automatic, unconsciously she smiles

3 comments:

Ayesha said...

I love the way you ended it. The contrast is beautiful. And I also love the paragraph about indifference.
Overall, great work :D

Nikita said...

i really like it. the writting is great... but it does not move me. i think it has to do with the fact that your subject is so visible to me in my everyday world and her pain is so shared and known by me that this comes only as an assertion of what we know.
please explain (fallen feathers)!
loved the last line
also: But acceptance is the family trade : VERY GOOD WRITING

Kavya said...

yeah, i get what you're saying. (which is why i put it up, i still have 'issues' putting up the touchy-feely stuff!) pain moves me to write, and then this one i wrote just to 'show and tell', rather than to 'feel' cause i'm the type that generally does the 'feel'type of writing a lot!

and fallen feathers: feathers have this purpose, they keep the bird afloat. but a few feathers gone, the bird still flies and it seems ok to the bird, to us looking at the bird...but to that one feather, it's down.

thanks a lot girls..love you guys!