Poem by Tanvi Nagar
Art by Emily Bourne
Faded
The warm yellow
sunshine-
fire from the golden
medallion
it’s orange-red fiery
fangs
reaching out towards
the earth
pouring in through
slits of the horizon
where the clouds don’t
cover the lands
and the mountain tops
don’t reach,
kissed my forehead and
tanned my hands
and then bounced off
the photograph
that was held in the
clasp of my sweaty palms.
Its brownish
coffee-coloured edges
tested by the toughest
times
and the yellowness set
into the frame
made the faces in the
picture seem more alive.
The two girls-hand in
hand
their soft faces lit up
by stunning smiles
looked directly into
the camera
as if staring straight
into my eyes.
Maybe it was a mirror,
one its kind-
for I was able to look
into my eyes
from so many years ago
yet, not fully
recognise the little girl
I saw in the faded
photo.
Amid the smudged
background
and the shoreline of
the beach
I could make out my
father’s figure-
admiring his two
daughters by the beach.
My mother behind the
lens
captured this moment into
a frame
yet was missing from
the shot
like some of the
fleeting passerbys’ hands
who were somehow
silhouettes in my past
and yet, nothing more
than that.
Sitting on the same
spot at the beach
looking at the sun fall
into the horizon
as if simply sliding by
into another world
carrying away the day’s
secrets,
and the clouds breaking
and crumbling-
colouring the sky with
varied hues,
all whilst my hands
held the course grains of the sand
and I paced into the
past and ran back as fast
into the present world
of mine.
The gentle wind touched
my forehead
and the water splashed
onto my feet
What if these were the
same droplets of water
that were captured in
the photograph?
Maybe, I held the same
sand in my hands too.
But the people in the
frame-
they couldn’t ever
remain preserved in that time.
They were simply
remnants of my past and
just like the
photograph in my hands,
they were blurred,
faded and damaged,
yet alive-
inside the chambers of
my mind.
Tanvi Nagar is a student of class 12 at DPS Gurgaon and loves to write, read and travel. She has been published by The Times of India, The Hindustan Times, The Ice Lolly Review, Cathartic Youth Lit Mag, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Weight Journal and Risen Zine among others. She has won the Eye Level Literary Award’18 by Daekyo, South Korea and Millennial Essay Writing Contest by UNESCO. She hopes that writing can change the world one day! Her website is- tanvinagar.com.