MY FIRST BIRTHDAY WAS IN AN ORPHANAGE
Children here prayed to Atlas;
The sky weighed on their shoulders.
And their hands never tasted water.
“There is a drought.”
My country is famous for loose lips and limp lies.
The cake slipped across the wooden expanse
A solitary pink rimmed candle
And they clustered before the pink blended with cream
When the world weakened,
Children laid on beds of sod
Nightmares almost sweetened to dreams—
But her eye still darted.
The eye belonged to Lady Macbeth
One of the orphanage’s own finally blood-free
Only six but aging rapidly—
She peered into my crib
And pulled back wool;
weighty, whispering.
—from 2022 Rattle Young Poets Anthology
__________
Why do you like to write poetry?
Kashvi Ramani: “Writing poetry to me is a way to put the messy, unseen aspects of my thoughts onto the page. By beautifying what I was previously so apprehensive to expose to others, I am able to recognize what I need and how I can improve. In addition, I always wrote poetry for myself. But more recently, I have realized that the written word is a medium where I can amplify the voices of individuals whose struggles will otherwise never get recognized.”
