FACES IN A BOOK

While you run and you try to hide

Plug your ears and chew down your pride

While the bell keeps tolling and reaches you still

Piercing your ears. Oh! So shrill!

Oblivious to your pain, deaf to that noise

The world sees your life at a brilliant poise.

Eyes hide envy, eyes hide gall

Waiting to see your glorious fall.

Thousands of ‘friends’ with faces in a book

Where your perennial smile they all mistook

For the happy heart that you wish you could be

Shutting out the noise, the light to see.

But your heart is always lonely and the noise tires you out

And out of that emptiness happy pictures sprout

Like a bed of flowers hiding roots so dry

Yet they’d all look brighter the louder they’d cry.

Aritra Charkrabarti