There was once a girl

Who called herself a friend

Who called me "vertically inadequate".

She might have used a word harsher than the two

And managed to break my heart into pieces more than a few

To earn a critic for features I could not change,

Seemed to me, rather unfair and strange.

So I ran to people I called my friends

Laid open my chest, showed them where it bled.

They stitched one by one, with great and utter care,

"Show us where it hurts, show us where."

"I taste malice and insecurity," quivered Anger,

"Drops of your grace are in shades of multitudes," whispered Beauty,

"To aim for anything at all is to be higher than contained thoughts," silenced Wisdom.

They stitched and stitched,

Sewed and weaved,

Until the wound had healed, all but a hole.

I stood up, staggering,

I tried not to fall,

I picked my scissors and my thread,

And with them, I embarked on my journey ahead.

The road was long and my strength did not suffice,

Darkness befell; black crows circled narrowing their mustard eyes.

They snickered,

"Don't be mistaken"

They sang,

"You are flawed and broken."

One by one my stitches fell through,

I arrived at a hut, battered and bruised.

A hand, soft and warm

Lined with Marks of wrinkle and age

Carried me inside.

She was Love, dressed in ethereal white;

Casting everywhere her haze of light.

The hut was as golden as sunshine,

Smelling a mixture of honey and cream.

Heat dissipated to every corner,

Except one, which was as icy as a mourner.

In there lay a large pot with a rusty lid,

I lifted the lid and peeped inside.

Floating inside, was a creature feeble and blind

Tiny but vaguely familiar.

"Who is this, Mother Love?" I inquire

"She refused love oh dear,

Refused to let it seep into her veins,

So she shrunk and shrunk

Until she shrunk to the size of her thoughts

Confined in a cage instead.

Bitter and discarded,

Never to grow,

Never to flourish,

In eternal pain, she shall perish."

I put the lid back on

And let Mother Love move on

She mends my cracks with gentle ease

She mends with gold

She mends with love

She mends with ivory leaves

I expand and expand until I have outsized

The hut and everything else in sight.

I bid her farewell

And promise to see her soon.

She gives me a flower.

Its petals, vivid in full bloom.

I met the girl who called herself a friend, the next day

I had outgrown her by a feet and an inch

Or rather her thoughts, so it seemed.

The writer is a fourth semester Journalism student at American International University-Bangladesh.