Pins,
Polished with morbid malevolence
Sharpened with whets of wickedness
Prick with painful precision
First with callous apathy
Then with a mocking indulgence
Thrusting her
Firmly and resolutely
Into the murky echelons of despondency.
Pricking ceaselessly at her soul
With gritty determination
Unearthing those awful sores
Of inexplicable misery and dejection
Mercilessly mauling all bringers of hope
They jab on.
Even if she couldn’t heal
Those pin-pricked sores
Those sores flecked with evil intent,
Garnished with sinful slyness,
All was not quite so inexorable
For she could leap
With stealth and agility
Through the window
To worlds lying far beyond our own.
Worlds woven; intricately, exquisitely
With exotic imaginings
Bewitched into being
With enchanting lies
Into whose refuge she could flee
To escape those painful pricks
An ethereal wall of deception
Reinforced with tantalizing dreams
Shielding her from those pin induced twinges
Still attacking her with rhythmic regularity
More than you ever would know.
But she is safe for now
Amidst a labyrinth of lies
Lost in the mist of myriad worlds
The faint flicker of a smile plays upon her face.
Malvika Parthasarthy, Cluny Convent School
