A GIRL, UNFOLDING…

I was once a girl,
with scraped knees and sky-sized dreams,
braids pulled tight, eyes alight with mischief.

Girlhood was monsoon rain –
wild, uncontained,
running barefoot through courtyards
before the world taught us to cave.

Womanhood did not arrive gently.
It announced itself in expectations and marksheets,
in glances that graded our every step,
in dreams negotiated for safety.

History breathed at our backs –
of armoured queens
and women who rewrote their destinies.
Yet we waged our wars in whispers,
balancing brilliance with modesty;
and in the hush of midnight cries
and unfinished sleep,
we forged a resilience few could see.

And then she became a mother –
unforgiving and fierce,
when she held that tiny heartbeat
she came to understand –
this was the first time she was the horizon
to someone’s dawn.

They called it growing up.
We knew it as shedding –
shedding the fear of being too much,
shedding apology from our voices,
shedding the need to please.

The girl did not disappear.
She became spine, She became flame.
She became a woman –
an architect of ambition, a keeper of generations,
a quiet force – not hardened, but forged; still unfolding.