Every Piece Of Me

By Pankhuri Jain

That familiar wallpaper, through curious eyes and faint chiming,

The ‘glow-in-the dark’ moon and stars on my ceiling,

Put together by my father while my mother would hold the ladder,

Twinkling in the night, lulling me into sleep.

On those walls where I painted my masterpieces,

Often followed by the cling of bangles as my mother would hurriedly wipe those away.

Soon, those scribbles gave way to posters of heavy metal bands from a long-lost time,

‘I am not of this generation’ – I would declare to anyone who would listen,

But today I pen this down, listening to trending pop-stars,

Holding onto my ‘youth’.

And now I look around,

That room is long gone,

The one I would keep dark,

And wince as my mother would pull away the curtains.

I no longer wake to the sight of crinkling newspapers and smell of tea,

With my bespectacled parents,

I wake up to a cruel alarm, 

To espressos and clinking keys on a laptop,

To a half-hearted breakfast,

And the endless chant of ‘hustle’.

But, now I long to make that home, 

Where laughter drowns the sound of alarms,

With wallpaper that would gather all the moons and stars,

Stars that will twinkle for another child - 

My child, 

As my mother’s bangles once sang for me. 

By Pankhuri Jain