ONE OF THEM Poem by P.P. Ramachandran

Girls wait for the bus,
At the school bus stop.

However hard they try
Umbrellas, bags, footwear
And uniforms cannot contain
Their bodies that spill over.

Nor can they conceal
In their words and looks,
Postures and steps,
Their racing hearts
That come out in the open.

Lined with anxiety,
Their eyes turn away
From the buses that
Speed past them.

One of them will become a
Bureaucrat, another a housewife,
Yet another will lose her way.

Sitting in a bus with an infant
On her lap, one will tell her
Husband, while going past
The school, this is where
I studied.

There
One will be waiting for
The bus. Still.