I wish upon a shooting star

I sit, quiet and lifeless, in the blue balcony;
I am seven, heavy hearted, torn, and ripped;
I touch the cold of my skin through the shreds of my clothes,
And get a bite on the places that he knew to be his.

My mind feels fuzzy, hot and flushing red,
My body is worn and frost bitten,
I manage a blanket from inside the room, anyway;
And I look up, up at heavens.

“Eyes never up,” he said, but this time, they look.
Look at the million jewels and clouds in the brilliant, wonderful blue sky,
Beauty and devastation all at once, a graveyard and nursery of stars running across
Like they have created their own lifekind.

And then,
A sharp, dazzling shooting star.

“Make a wish,” he had said, when he had first come to play with me, that night,
I had wished, and I wished hard
As I obeyed all he said,
I stared at the ceiling fan as he did what he pleased,
And looked at the diamonds,
And clandestinely, I wished for death.

The next day, I touched my raw knees,
Bruised and bloody from what he had called devotion
And my chest and my thighs and all the places he’d ripped and seen
Like a ragdoll, discarded and used like
God’s abandoned, worthless, sensitive creation

Years, it happens again, again and again
A million times, the same way as before.
The stars in the sky fall,
And my limbs grow loose and malleable
And cotton fills my thoughts more and more.

The brilliant poet, the dazzling talent,
The top of the school, radiant young girl
Gets buried deeper and deeper in her grave of dissociation and disconnect
And begged him every night for mercy, gave away her love, her passion for survival in the world.

Years pass into decades, and no one pays attention,
The girl had turned stupid, she had drowned and died,
Some other girl had come and replaced her eventually,
and the little girl stayed lost, forever, in her ocean of a mind

A fateful day, it comes,
I scream and shout at my parents,
And eventually,
It slips
I am once again on my knees, a little girl,
Begging for mercy and care from the adults,
That she craves.

Mom and dad—
They stare, and stare, and for a moment, I think they’re about to say something kind—
And oh—
“You are overreacting.”
They stand up, roll their eyes, and leave me, a rotting corpse, behind.

“Eyes never up,” he had always said, but this time again, they look
Look at the million jewels and clouds in the brilliant, wonderful blue sky,
Beauty and devastation all at once, a graveyard and nursery of stars running across
Like they have created their own lifekind

And then,
A sharp, dazzling shooting star.

“Make a wish,” he had said, when he had first come to play with me, that fateful night,
I had wished, and I wished hard
As I had obeyed all he had said,
And stared at the ceiling fan as he had done what he pleased,
And looked at the diamonds,
And clandestinely, once again, I wished for death

And so it ended.
With them, all the hope my young heart had sought to keep.
My parents, my creators, my first lovers, my blood,
Had taken me by the neck and drowned me down until I ceased to breathe
And left my abandoned body alone, in the deep blue ocean.

To be true, though —
I drowned for years,
Decades, and vicennials, and lives
Until I woke up, after the storm,
On a clear winter morning,
On an empty beach,
With a new life.

The ocean gently splashed against the sand
And light fog hung in the air,
The drops of water swayed from the tips on the plants,
And the monster wasn’t around anywhere

I sat down on the edge of my dorm bed,
And looked back at the palm of my hands,
And another girl sat in front of me, unpacking her bags,
And smiled, as she lend out a hand to help me stand

And slowly as I picked the pieces of shattered glass and put them together
And felt my lungs start to breathe again
I looked at the the reflection in the ocean my parents had drowned me in
And found the very person little me would’ve found peace in

The grief never went away, and neither did the girl
But I learnt a new idea of healing
Growing — it is not forgetting the grief
But building a world around the black hole
With new, fantastic experiences

So, I took the girl to Belgium,
And California, and France
And Greece and Rome
And all the places of my past,
And in the end, to India, in the balcony at night
Wrapped around her arms and watched the stars burn bright

I told her about the monster,
And the things that he did.
And cried for hours.
About the past they forbid.
And she cried with me.
As she stroked my hair.
And wrapped me around her chest.
And kissed away my tears.

And as we looked at the million jewels and clouds in the brilliant, wonderful blue sky,
Beauty and devastation all at once, a graveyard and nursery of stars running across,
Like they have created their own lifekind
I finally remembered what they meant by innocent, honest, childish bliss,
And wished, perhaps,
For the first time in my life,
Clandestinely
To live.

And then,
A sharp, dazzling shooting star.…

~Riya~

Riya is a fifteen year old girl who has never known a standstill in her life. She has travelled different towns throughout her childhood, and looked at different people's lives through her young eyes. Growing up, she has realised her love for literature, poetry, and her pen, and spends her school nights drawing up universes for her poems to talk about all she's seen through her life.

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