Of notes and Ashes.

In the cradle of childhood’s careless whispers,

Where paper birds carried tender secrets,

We carved our hearts on the wings of seasons,

Mimicking dreams from flickering screens—

Bold, beautiful, and naive.

Through the cracks of wooden desks,

Our scribbled affections flew unnoticed,

Until the sharp whistle of our mentors struck,

A tempest of sticks against innocent skins,

A punishment shared for silence kept.

Laughter dissolved beneath cane’s weight,

As guilt draped like smoke in the classroom air.

How unfair, to chastise the innocent choir,

For they saw the notes but sang no betrayal.

We bled together, bound by the ink of youth.

Time, the great forger of distance,

Plucked the strings of our fleeting symphony.

The girls to whom we wrote—

Now bound in vows to unfamiliar names,

And we, to wives unlettered in our schoolyard lore.

Yet in the ash of those childhood fires,

A lesson lingers, smoldering quietly:

What we cherished was not the love itself,

But the act of loving, pure and untamed,

Untouched by consequence, fleeting as rain.

For soil reddens on rain drop,

So does the ash rest in a common urn.

©Bunguswa™