Am I Pretty?

Starring blankly at her wardrobe,
She shuffles her clothes messily,
And as every dress imagined fails,
She detaches each of them hopingly

Red makes her look fat
Black makes her look darker
Yellow looks stretched from her belly
And orange outcasts her unsurprisingly

She walks through the gate of her school
Blind to people coming in her way
Deaf to words of absolute dismay
She walks shamefacedly to her classroom
Ignoring every giggle during the day
Escaping every comment on her way

Every time he passes by, she calms her nerves
And with this feeling of being unnoticed
It confirms she is not allowed to love

She’s teased on Tuesday
She’s bullied on Wednesday
She’s gossiped about in history
She’s a butt of jokes in geometry

Hurriedly she rushes in her room
Holding god’s idol tightly, she cries so miserably
Tell me why didn’t you make me beautiful?

Every day’s hurt makes you numb
Tears only give birth to self pity
This lesson from life one day everyone learns

Enough! She shouts; enough to this stout!
She reads, she observes
She unlearns, she learns
Her wisdom so evidently pronounced

People genuinely sing ‘Lala!’ to looks just once
But if you sing bad intellectually
Then eventually these are the ones who quietly shun

Written by Vrushali Deshpande