The childhood obituary, in four acts

#obitpoetry

i. Childhood ──died on a random afternoon

wearing a daisy adorned dress.

I had outgrown it, unfortunately.

I watched the yellow ribbons on my braids

finally coiling around my feet

when my parents said i couldn't play outside anymore.

I wonder if my grasp on the bton racket

tightened for a shutter click second that moment.

I thought of throwing tantrums

to get my way through as i always did

for a chipped ice cream cone.

But i Didn't.

Instead i folded my childhood with all my

outgrown clothes. In each fold of clothes,

I tucked some of the bite size love

my little palm could hold,

Now they rest on the shelf reeking of rusted nostalgia.

ii. Childhood ──died when i was more worried

about my appearance than

reaching the playground before other kids.

I no longer counted the games i won

but the pimples on my cheek.

I counted the number of blinks it would take

to notice the scars they left

and the remedies i'd try on to erase them.

My crayoned wall ,

My diary of crooked entries,

Dust shrouded them the same way

I used to curtain my face with hair

to shield the parts of me

I hadn’t learned to love yet.

iii. Childhood ──died when the bell

of ice cream van became irritating to my ear.

I preferred the sound of some "I'm proud of you"s.

They fell like a few mere words from people's mouth

But they tasted like honey flavoured gum

on my tongue when I said them on repeat.

Something that I'd not swallow,

But suck on often,

To taste the moment over and over.

iv. Childhood ──died when i stopped

seeing weird shapes in clouds.

Rather i saw the shapes of my flaws

through everyone's words.

They wore colours,

Colors I never learned the names of.

i saw shapes of my boundaries,

insecurities,

limitations,

complexities,

cracks,

and none of them resembled me anymore.

That’s how childhood died,

shapeshifted into something I couldn’t hold anymore.

images are not mine