Skip to main content

The Perfect Shadow

I saw my shadow dancing
As I walked home from school
I felt a pang of longing
If only I could look that good.
She was tall and slender,
In the late afternoon sun
Her hair  framed her face
Curls bouncing at every turn
Her silhouette looked so pretty
I thought with pleasure and pain
But then some clouds appeared
She disappeared in the rain.
Her face may be smooth
Without pimples and marks
Her figure well defined,
Smooth and dark
Her hair may look thick,
She doesn't need glasses to see
But I realized as the drops fell fast,
I'd much rather be me.
Not quite as tall,
Glasses from the reading
Not quite so slender,
Because of chocolates I love eating
The pimples I'd rather do without,
But there's so much else to gain,
My poor pretty dancing shadow,
Can't dance in the rain!
                                -Ananya Ravikumar
                                  October 2013
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thoughts from lonely days

Some nights before I started to write this in mid-2022, I dreamt that I was in an aircraft that was plummeting to the earth. I was not surprised by this dream - less than a week had passed since a tragic plane crash in China. What did surprise me was that I had continued to hope that the plane would right itself until the very end. So when I woke up, breathing hard, still alive, what upset me the most about my nightmare was not that the plane had crashed, but that I had not made peace with my death in those final moments.  I've spent a lot of time thinking about death in the last two years; many of us probably did as we anxiously watched counters on dashboards, each uptick marking the end of another human life. On nights when my overactive imagination conjured up terrible scenarios, I protected myself by taking a mental step back and reminding myself that death was inevitable. But creating distance made me feel guilty. Was it not wrong to feel anything less than all the sadness I...
Post a Comment
Read more

Hot Potato

 _ ____ is like a hot potato  I don't want to hold it  It's too big to throw away ____ is  like a hot potato  I hold on to it  So you don't have to  ____ is like a hot potato  Watching you hold it Still hurts somehow ____ is like a hot potato  I throw it at whoever's around When I can't hold it any longer ____ is like a hot potato  It will cool in time If ____ really is like a hot potato  Maybe we should pass it around  So when it cools,  Our hands are reddened,  but still whole  And we could make a salad  - Ananya  10th December 2024
Post a Comment
Read more

On Bangles and Car keys:

We remember and register the strangest things. Lots of  Indian women who drive wear bangles and own a set of car keys. When I was younger and anxiously awaiting my mother’s return from wherever she’d gone- the sound of those bangles and keys was what I would listen for.When I heard the sound of her fumbling for the keys, I would rush to the door to greet her ( as I grew older I would do the opposite- turn the TV off or shut the novel I was reading and run in). But whatever the response was to the keys and bangles, I would always know they were my mother’s.  I may hear other keys and bangles, but somehow, they always sound different. To this day, that sound means ‘mum’s home’ and thus, even today, I cherish it.
1 comment
Read more