Few Pages Bound Together Poem by Malabika Ray Choudhury

on a sultry day when there was nothing else to accomplish,
roaming around listlessly in my parents' house, I found my little diary from Grade Seven!
with a picture of a Rose bouquet on the cover!

my best friend, who I thought I couldn't live without, but who disappeared later in my life, got the diary for me -
located it among her father's office-materials,
and determined - it was a nice present for a book-worm girl whose only passion was papers!
although she was so thoughtful, it was a really tiny diary, I thought - not enough space to cover all my gripping thoughts!
my head was bursting with ideas - from appeasing my over-scrupulous Math teacher's tantrums to secret chatting with my best friends,
and mostly about the boys around us, some of whom were a bit silly,
but paid a lot of attention to me!

question was - who did I like? They seemed unpretentious, were they really?
was not sure myself. One day decided on one,
and he biked away at an accelerated speed at my sight!
was I not pretty? Was I not charming?
was I bossy to frighten them? Was my voice not alluring?
at last I did decide not to bother about them too much!
but get on with my literary life!

the diary was my precious friend, as close as a friend could be,
I confided, poured my all, everything  in her - from my deep-down secrets, little happinesses, my innocent pleasures,
to the intense sadnesses I felt sometimes.
it was not the passionate diary of a young girl hiding in the secret basement of a building,
hiding from the cruelest regime in the world,
it was the candid expressions of a sensitive, shy, demure, emotional teenager,
the only outlet of her true feelings about the intriguing world.

how much I admired the pretty dresses my friends wore, and wished I had a few!
how much I admired spending time in our patio at the magnificent dawn when nobody was up, to see what I was up to,
how much I wished I were an author, and wrote novels like Jane Austen.
how much I wished I lived in Shakespeare's time, and be one of his maidens.
Miranda, and Opehelia, and Juliet, and Rosalind,
who emerged in my wildest dreams when I was in a dreamland!
the dreams which I wished, would never end,
but for sure they ended eventually!

A Diary - a few pages bound together - was me!