The ten year old girl
Used to hide in the ancient attic
Where sunlight used to filter in
Through the single glass tile on the roof
Creating a square patch of slanted light.
Bending in the strip of filtered light
She used to devour volumes of comic strips
Mandrake the Magician and Phantom, the ghost who walks
Passed through her universe of absolute solitude
Undisturbed by screams and shouts from the world below
Where relatives arrived as hordes of judgmental comments
Where her mother’s endless demands
Were finally reduced to her being shown off for a single moment before them
And then withdrawn with embarrassed laughter
But, the cruel looks would by then judge her to be deviant
Some of them even squeezed in one or two disparaging comments.
At thirty five
She came home again.
To confront her tired parents
And still-thriving relatives.
Like before, she still escapes through words...
