The Orphan

- Priyanka Ravishankar

An empty room,

An open window.

A dreamless night,

A trembling girl.

The howling wind.

The giant shadows,

of the quivering trees,

A trembling girl.

A cricket rehearsing its routine recital,

A leaking pipe, an open tap.

A flickering light peeps through a wedge.

An eerie branch brushes the window ledge.

She lays curled up on her bed,

Hugs her teddy tight.

Counting in vain, conceited sheep

But she only awakens, as the sheep leap.

Her mother doesn’t sing her a lullaby.

Her mother doesn’t tell her a bed time tale.

All she hears is the sleepless owl,

And the singing wind that seems to growl.

There’s nothing that she can do,

But hug her teddy tight,

Pray to God to bring her sleep,

And bravely fight the lachrymal seep.

Her playful, big and blue eyes,

filled with tears of fear,

Look ’round the room, out the window,

Her fingers scratch her forlorn toe.

She braves her fear and gets off bed,

Peeps under it, shivering.

Imagines a blistered evil gremlin,

Her courage’s now tremblin’

But darkness is all that meets her eye!

She creeps back onto that wretched bed.

Pictures her parents sleeping soundly,

Screams to them within, whispering loudly.

She longs for her mother’s lap,

She longs for her father’s hug,

She hugs her teddy tight,

Hugs her teddy tight.

She looks through those plastic eyes

They might have been her father’s,

Searches in them, a loving mother;

Hugs her teddy, her new mother.

She has those who gave her birth,

But the trembling little girl

Is an orphan every night.

She hugs her teddy tight.

The orphan.. hugs her teddy tight.