Twenty

On the first day of the new millenium,

My father flew home to my mother and unborn me,

They handed him a memorandum,

Remember this day, a new beginning,

He couldn't help the smile on his face,

his child would be born into a new age,

opportunities he never had, endless possibilities,

Heading into unchartered waters,

A bright new day where the sun shone

We were no longer fearful of the unknown,

We were the discoverers, the pioneers,

The poets and the engineers

The brave and the brokenhearted,

Fighting for a future we all wanted,

So when his daughter cried a whole hospital awake

he heard only the roar of promise,

I was born into the tide of curiosity and change,

A land of innovators and artists loved the same,

Innovations that cut me out of my mother,

Poetry that would pull me out of my own personal fire,

Headed on an upward slope towards greatness,

Now we watch our forests burn in the oxygen they gave us,

Watched nanometres of nucleicacid bring the world to its knees,

An unflinching world that runs tirelessly,

Hardwork, patience, the only guarantee

Towards a dream they've allowed themselves to see

All forced to sit by and watch idly

People fighting for the right to breathe,

Fear to be who we truly want to be,

Bleeding to love freely,

Confined to sit silently;

Two decades in, just shy of my twentieth,

Reminiscing the promises of the past,

Resilience in the face of adversity,

Empathy to balance the cruelty,

Responsibiltity for the planet we inherited,

Love for the people we share it with,

If all hope is lost, hold on anyway

there's so much we have yet to see,

the Andromeda Galaxy, supposedly

When the lights dim out enough

There's a whole universe waiting for me,

People I have yet to meet,

the future that was promised

And the dreams I let myself believe.

                                  -- Ananya Murali