She buckled onto her feet her new shoes,
Mother said it was her first day of school,
She would learn lessons of History and Math,
But what happened that day was a ruthless blood bath..
There were men in shrouded black robes,
As if to envelope us with death in their cloaks,
To instill fear, to suppress the fight,
That we put up for everything right,
She, hidden in the shadows dark,
Saw sights that left her soul deeply marked,
Leaving her cut and profusely bleeding,
The pain sharp and savagely searing,
But in her eyes, you see a cruel world unfold,
Dead was the child within, her sanity was holed,
Numbed from the fear and terror stricken,
The fog before her eyes just thickened,
And just as it began, it was all over, in a flash,
The silence was deafening, the air settling with ash,
But just before someone led her away, she unbuckled her shoes,
Never, never to wear them again, never, never to see the world with the same naïve view…
Aparna Sekhar
B.A. PYEJ
Batch of 2015-2018
Madwomen in the Attic 