Prickly poppy

Little yellow poppy tells, “There lived a girl in the meadows.”

She was violet and I was yellow

Yet she loved to play

WIth my soft young petals

She lived with few others

Who took lesser care of her

So she made sure to never

Let the sun leave my way

And as the moonlight shone down

On the glistening grass, I

Would listen to her passing by the field

Singing her sorrows away

And as her soft padded feet

Would reach by my bed

She would bend down

Only to gently caress my head

And say, Little yellow poppy

You better grow prickles someday

For as fragile as you are

The wind will carry you away

As the familiar bell would ring

She would run back to the cabin

Her imprisonment until

The next near dawn

Only she didn’t come back the next day

My petals coated black with cinders

That had flown from not so far away

Of the cabin’s wood that had burnt all night and burnt all day

The wind did come and it carried away

The embers that lay silently on my petals

But carry it did not my mourning self

For I was now a prickly poppy, and even the wind shied away

Little yellow poppy, she told

The words floating in the breeze

Like weightless ash

And a thousand regrets

Saba Singh, Class X, Vivek High School, Chandigarh