Abandoned Books

Who cares about books anymore?

Aren’t they just crazy scribbles

Of an insane mind?

Which still believes,

that words matter?

Who would care about,

A library?

Which is eventually burnt down

To make way

For things, more important ?

They say,

Books crave solitude

Lone man’s treasure

It isn’t fashionable to read,

Habit of nerds and geeks

So the books die

Choking in their own unread words

Dust breaking down their spines

With disrepair and sheer abandon

And then they are sold

Dime a dozen

Like happiness

In the old bazzar

I too feel scared

Of being judged

Therefore sometimes when I read

I hide inside a chrysalis

Hung on the mulberry tree

Of my garden

Where I can’t be seen

My mind takes me to Plath

And my heart sings with Woolf

And yet, when you walk upto me

I don’t raise a storm

I just hide my book

Or burn the pages, like you do

Afterall, the dragons are imaginary

And so are the notions of freedom

You chime,

And I believe you

-Rianka Bose Saha