The Girl Who Dared to Dream

By Ishika Aggarwal

At the edge of the pool with her lavish dress soaked at the rim,

Bare feet swinging in the chaos of the sun soaked noon,

She left out a sigh into the air reeking of sweat and laughter,

Bathing in regret, nostalgia, and what some might call paranoia.

She glanced at her phone for the time, ten forty-five,

Only she was strangled in the whirlwind of 2009,

The job acceptance hundreds dream of, rot in her spam folder,

And the one that she dreamt of at eighteen, in the bags under her eyes.

Those eyes that once glistened with hopes and desire,

Now welled with the possibilities of the past,

If only her heart could shut the listless sounds of the world,

And hear the purpose for which it willed to beat tirelessly, incessantly.

A pinch of faith was all she ever asked for, 

Only to receive a dry well of trust,

Echoing with the barbaric, brutal bends of the world,

Parched and blue with ridicule, she fell into the well.

The well was the abyss the world intended to drown her in,

It flood with expectations and assumptions defining her existence,

Cruelty masked with smiles and rules threatening to suffocate,

The courage she dreamt with, died with her upon her entry to adulthood.

Forced to succumb to the ways of the world,

The ones as fragile as the glass of wine in her hand,

The ones as clear as the obscurity of the bottomless ocean,

Succeeded at making her one of the many puppets of carbon roaming it.

In the eyes of many she was fulfilled and fierce,

An inspiration to her younger siblings and a topic to brag about for her parents,

Alas, the taste of her supposed success choked and burnt her,

As bitter as the venom to please the world.

Only if she had dared to shatter that vial of venom,

Dared to displeasure, display defiance and evoke dismay,

Liked she’d once dared to dream, 

Perhaps the knots of her heart wouldn’t be rotting in a pit of self pity.

By Ishika Aggarwal