A Scholastic Art and Writing awards 2017-18 Gold Key winner selected from all works of poetry throughout the Southwest region.
‘Time’ is a poem written by 14-year-old poet and women’s advocate Anya Thakur. She works to empower and uplift communities as founder of GirlUp Dallas, a UN Women organization, and a MetoWe partner with ArtRising, which provides arts enrichment to underprivileged communities and creates diverse programming for South and East Asian women. Hosting education, self-defense, and language and literature classes to empower rural women in Delhi, Mumbai, and Munipur, and humanitarian efforts with Myna Mahila, which empowers women in rural India through health education, her women’s advocacy promotes UN Women’s mission to ensure a fair and equitable future, and she has traveled throughout the United States and India to speak for girl’s education and empowerment.
Time
they call me a thief
i’ve stolen away their loved ones
turned roses to dust
easily carried away by the wind
burnt cities to rubble and bone
turned eyes sheeny with tears
and that elusive, fleeting hope
to hurt and skies streaked with thunderstorms
painted in liquid shades of darker and darker
stripped declarations of love
to false, empty platitudes
so tell me, who am i?
_ _ _
you want to turn and twist me inside out
meld me, possess me
wrap me around your ribs and
protect the heartbeat thrumming inside of you
cloak yourself with the ghost of sun and moon
i am not spider webbing strings of pearls
and tiered diamond chokers
to drape artfully around your neck
or sugary pills and ambrosial nectar to swallow
i’ll turn you to cartilage and fractures
strip the skin from your back
and live to see you dead
– – –
i take as much as i give
i’ll be that unseen force that propels
you forward and holds your enemies back
pulling them under and choking out
their lives, letting their blood trickle out
and turn to a river of water and whiskey
that graces your lips
i’m not one you want to waste
i can give you worlds inside worlds
then the tide of the oceans, and even
have you fighting the wind itself
standing firm and tall
in sunshine and hurricanes
you’ll never have to bow again
– – –
