She wanted so badly to go mall shopping with her friends, but there was this inherent 'lack of fun' app installed in her mum, so there was no way she could go if her dad was not around to plead on her behalf.
This was an important event. She had to buy a gift for her boy in Standard Five. He was only two years older than she was and he was such a hunk. All the girls swooned around him, but she had caught his eye.
She had to think of something and fast. Words swarmed like a buzz of bees in her mind. To be pretty for you I have dropped two seeds of turnsole in the dark of both eyes.
She started scribbling and pretty soon there was a poem almost by enchantment on the page. After she read the poem her mum smiled and nodded.
❧✿❧
Barque of Frailty by Rishi Dastidar,
Barque of frailty, full of reformed rakes and bookish hearts
Block of fealty, full of knees doffing and hats bending
Barker of fantasy, full of bodies’ memories and memory’s body
Baroque of felony, full of fire curves and wavering sin
Byzantine of fertility, full of ground awakenings and blue sighs
Burst of fragility, full of hairline universes and breaking beats
Bloom of futility, full of pause buttons and waiting rooms
Brioche of flexibility, full of lifted crusts and spongy beds
Bridle of fashionability, full of revolving time and entropy’s glitter
Bulb of formidability, full of electric light never off since 1901
Blush of facility, full of a click’s ease and railway charm
Burial of fallibility, full of resurrected promises and wave logic
Brick of feasibility, full of home lies and silent explosions
