Little Girl

Looked at her broken toy.

Tears rolled down her cherry cheeks.

Little Girl...

Knew not the troubles of the world

Her doll had broken,

And so her naïve heart.

Little Girl...

Daddy would get her another.

But the wrecked doll.

She wanted it back!

Little Girl...

“Never would it happen again.”

She said with cheeks moist and twinkling eyes.

Little Girl...

Wept for a petty doll.

Naive was she.

So stupid, so dull and immature!

Little Girl...

Her doll never was fixed again.

She knew not,

Broken dolls meant not a broken heart.

For, greater is the plight of the world!

Little Girl...

So innocent, so pure, so chaste.

Little Girl...

Has grown up now.

The world she has seen.

And so its sourness, harshness and spite

Little Girl...

Her faith is shattered, her love lost.

There’s no twinkle in her eye.

Her heart now a broken toy.

Yet, she doesn’t weep.

Tears that once easily flowed

Are now all dry.

Daddy’s little girl...

Makes everyone laugh.

Her pain, she has buried in their laughter’s sound.

The scars have faded with time.

But her heart still is sore.

She knew it wouldn’t mend.

Her heart’s like the doll she once wrecked.

Little Girl...

“Oh! How stern she has become

How harsh, how unforgiving, how insensitive,

To the miseries of the world.

What a stoic!”

She hears people say.

Smiling, she walks past them.

Little Girl...

Weird is the world!

How uncanny, how mysterious, how capricious

Thought she.

Not once did it sense her pain, or hear her cries.

Strange! How it now feels her harshness.

Her sternness, her rudeness, her stoicism.

Little Girl...

Has grown up now.

No more stupid, naïve or immature.

The ways of the world she knows.

And how well she’s learnt the pangs of love!

Yet a stoic she remains.

Silently bearing the sting,

Right at the core of her heart.

--Ekata Banerjee