One balmy afternoon,

I built a house with cloth and bamboo shoots.

walls splashed with yellow and brown roses.

Egyptian cotton, I still remember!

Soft and warm I curled in them.

Empty utensils bubbling with joy,

on a fire stoked by my dreams.

A cabbage patch wrapped around me,

My doors open for all to see.

But that was one balmy afternoon…

’cause every evening the walls came down

spreading themselves on a hard wooden bed.

Ugliness sprawled on it at night.

tepid breath seeping through the yarn,

the bamboo shoots no more held up the walls

roses wilted under the weight of the thorns.

My head didn’t want to rest on the dream anymore

Every night I wish I could forget that one night some more.

Insia Dariwala is a graduate from F.I.T New York (Advertising and Mass communications), loves to tell stories and is a filmmaker. ‘The Candy Man’, her hard hitting debute film on child abuse won her two ‘Best Director’ awards in India (2009, 2010) and also got nominated at Barcelona International Film Festival and the New York Short film Festival in 2010.