Ball of paper, crumpled and thrown with the force of a little boy’s strength, didn’t go the distance. Her mind, a rarity in those times of chaos and noise was the surface of a lake, unperturbed and untouched. Ball of paper, crumpled and thrown with the intention of disturbing the delicate balance resting on the wooden surface, didn’t succeed in keeping up with the anarchy of hers. Her fingers tapped against the surface while her legs tapped a certain asynchronous musical note. Ball of paper, crumpled and thrown with the world hidden inside, didn’t muster enough strength to open at her countenance. Her eyes scanned the air around her and they felt just fine.

Until Ms. Agnes sashayed her indomitable spirit in the classroom with a brown leather bound book in her hands. The world changed as soon as the lights flicked on in her kaleidoscopic brain and she looked up through the long and discomfiting forms of tender grass like a gazelle. Those long stares with those innocent eyes were surely planning to hitch a ride with Ms. Agnes on her journey to a world unknown.

“You ask too many questions, don’t you?” A world away, her mind wandered but her mouth unfortunately was located in this part of the universe where the “W”s ruled and the only way to escape the tiny wormholes of stasis was to pepper people with questions. Opening her eyes for the first time when the morning trawler hauled its bounty ashore, she didn’t look outside the window like you might have expected. Her toes, uneven and a little monkey-like according to her poorly researched encyclopedic exploration were the cause of the concern. “Why is one of them fatter than the other?” “Why is the toenail pinker than yesterday?” “What would it look like if I made a toe ring out of a strand of grass and stuck a little peony on it?”
A barrage of questions like the reckless firings at Gettysburg whereas here no peonies or toes were squashed. Her mind raced to different configurations of the toes where one was blue and the other was pink and they weren’t just limited to five but one leg had seven and the other had ten of them. A world of possibilities opened up with her toes peeking out of the blanket that wintry morning but just then the door of her bedroom creaked open to the waft of normal air walking in.
“Time to get ready, no one likes a late girl at the school.”


“She followed the map past the playground, around the pond, and into a patch of tall grass.” Following those squiggly letters on the page of the book like ants scrounging for a grain of sugar, her fingers tip toed their way past the playground and were up against the tall patch of grass. Ball of paper, crumpled and thrown once again but this time they landed at the feet of Ms. Agnes. The war had been waged and her nimble fingers were just starting to feel their way past the mist they had drunk from the pond. Ms. Agnes, a strict Austrian woman with a build as wide as her command of the language wasn’t to be fooled around with. Standing up from her wooden chair, she picked up the ball of paper made by someone whom the class knew to be the most notorious troublemaker. She instructed her to continue reading the passage whereas she opened the unsolicited letter delivery from the insubordinate mailman. As soon as the tall patch of grass had been conquered, she looked at the glorious Ms. Agnes with her sharp nose piercing through the skin of the naughtiness that was ensuing in the classroom. The blackboard littered with white chalk characters and the haze generated by the constant writing and rubbing of everyday limestone activity in the background whereas the foreground humbled by the gladiatorial stance of Ms. Agnes. Her thick rimmed black spectacles resting gently on her sharp nose must have left that battle scar that every gladiator yearns for and the way her chest swelled and fell when she raised her voice to regain command was a sight for her to behold. She was awestruck and her eyes glistened with a golden shine only reserved for the most precious spectators in that arena. She closed her textbook and opened her notebook and took out her pencil colours knowing that it was a risk worth taking. The gladiator in her full glory was being praised by her most zealous fan and was adorned with wings, not made of feather, nor of light but of flowers. Petals overlapped like scales of some celestial creature, each one trembling with their own hue. Were those happy tears in her eyes or was that the soft pollen being dusted off by the wings that day, one would only question.

As soon as the bell rang and it was a time for recess, the class ran amok. Balls of paper, bits of wood and crayons and the cacophony of cries and laughter ensued. Did she sit down and read or did she continue with her drawing of the gladiator in her winged magnificence? The fanatical force of nature contrary to conventional wisdom ran behind her most adulated figure leaving a very visible bag of books and stationery behind. A real trailblazer leaving behind her just a few extra tulips and chrysanthemums as she sped away.

“Ms. Agnes, I will make a wooden chair for you”, she said when Ms. Agnes looked at her and smiled. Unlike other teachers of the school, she never really asked why she followed her whenever she had time to wander out of her classroom. Unlike most of the teachers who felt the need to curb her effervescent enthusiasm, Ms. Agnes never shied away from making her feel even more sparkling.

“Why would you make a wooden chair for me, Lily?”, she asked as she took a bite of sandwich from her bag.

“Uuummm…nnooo..”, she replied but neither her lips parted nor her teeth peeked out. A man of utmost knowledge would have surely made no sense of the sound he heard but Ms. Agnes knew better. Beneath those layered musical measures, was a magical sentence only a child spoke with confidence.
“I don’t know.”

Smiling her way while eating the sandwich, Ms. Agnes looked at the girl sitting in front of her. She kept looking at her shoes while her fingers drew shapes only her mind could see on the floor. Her hair, brown with streaks of sunlight in them fell on her forehead like a waterfall falling from a cliff not so high. The waterfall tresses weren’t continuous like the Niagara but there were streams of brown keratin spaced unevenly across her forehead. Her fingers were stout and her nails were not as long as the girls she had seen in the glass. Stout they were but they could surely weave a fine piece of silk. Ms. Agnes despite her family’s protestations had taken this job of English teacher in a town where religion never really confined itself to those four wooden walls and prejudice patrolled the streets like an obese cheeseburger sheriff. The battle of her confidence was against the time’s old guard of ignorance and each day was a step into the murky waters of the bayou. But here she was eating her cold sandwich in front of a child, unbothered, unaware and a wildflower. 
Her relentless questions were the answers to problems much larger than her little faultless eyes.

Just then the bell tolled and the charm was broken for the time being.
“Bye Ms. Agnes”, she waved her way out.
Agnes said goodbye, knowing that this bird would make her periodic visit again. 
When she moved, the wings didn’t flap so much as unfurl. They loosened in a drifting, melodic motion, releasing tiny flecks of pollen that shimmered like dust from a forgotten constellation. The air around her that she just vacated had grown warm, fragrant, touched with that faint sweetness that came right before spring decides to rise from its sleep. It was as if she a carried a season behind her, a soft, blooming promise that fluttered with every breath she took.

“Freak of a nature.”
“Fool.”
“Your parents need to get you checked.”

Did she care? Sometimes she did but most of the times her mind was full of chores she had to do in the garden. She wondered if her constant running around and picking up the flowers would help the butterflies ease their burden of collecting the sweet juice. Carrying the soft flowers in her wicker basket, she definitely felt her most natural self in that garden. Whereas boys and girls of her age kept running around in circles and picking at each other rather than picking up pebbles from the ground and bouncing them off the surface of the lake, she found a way to help the butterflies fly towards their weekly foray into the wild. Sometimes you can make a child forcefully eat the vegetables they don’t want to eat but can you make the butterflies suck the sweet nectar of every flower you have gathered for them? She was finding it hard to accept that her weekly meal wasn’t always fulfilling the customers of sweetness. She knew her mom would scold her when she would get home as her clothes were soiled and embellished with burs that kept her locked to this world of wonders. She looked at her fingernails and thought of all the earth she had filled up in those crevices which her mom would make her wash away. Those curious eyes observing the Velcro like burs stuck on her skirt were starting to slightly feel uneasy, maybe due to lack of sleep last night or an ingrown anxiety that she didn’t understand fully. A trance like state engulfed her and her body which was fidgeting like a dandelion swaying in the air locked itself in place while her curious eyes morphed into something more somber. A leaf gently floating down from the branches of the tree initiated the trance like state and her feet started to sink deeper into the ground. Was it an illusion of the supernatural or was Earth calling her to her bosom to rest? A stone swished past her left ear unable to break the impermeable sphere that had created around her and only the unexpected sound of a loud splash in the lake broke her abstraction.
Despite the general law of nature, her curiosity didn’t bother to take a look at the huge splash in the lake nearby and she started walking home.

No looking at the toes from the edge of her blanket, no looking outside the window for the squirrel’s morning greetings and no making silly faces in the mirror while brushing her teeth that day. A day which began as monotonously as it could without the usual effervescence of her being was one of the days to be pockmarked in the grand calendar of the universe. Walking towards the school, she felt uneasy and thought of her clothes being wrinkly and scratching against her skin. The feeling of uneasiness had descended upon her and she wasn’t always happy when the air tasted insipid. The irresistible urge to scratch the underside of her arms and the constant tapping of her own feet walking towards the school felt like a chore today and she wanted to go back home. But just then, she found her strength in the one person she always adored. Ms. Agnes, standing outside the classroom with her brown leather bound book was waiting for Lily to finally figure out the wrongness today.

“Good morning, Ms. Agnes”, greeted Lily with a bit of rumination bubbling inside her.
“Good morning, little peach”, Agnes greeted her back with her usual gentleness and love for her.

The vectors of disease had finally entered the classroom and left their indelible mark on the blackboard where only chalk and duster are the beacons of light.

“CUNT”
“NAZI QUEEN”
“SAY NO TO CAMPS”

The kids couldn’t fully make out what was inscribed on the board and some even chuckled and whispered amongst themselves at the C-word. As soon as Agnes saw it, the shield of stubbornness broke down and Lily could feel the vulnerability of her demeanour for the first time. Searching for the duster to wipe off the vileness spewed on the board, she scampered across the classroom to find the duster. But to no avail, the only thing she found were more chalk sticks and murmurs amongst the backbenchers. Seeing her struggle for the very first time, Lily stood up from her bench and took out her napkin from the bag. The class looked at her as she walked towards Ms. Agnes and handed her napkin to wipe off the text on the board. More whispers and further brewing of the judgements. A ball of paper, crumpled and thrown with an air of arbitration which had no qualification to pass a decree. After the initial uneasy foreplay to the class, it went off rather smoothly with less questions from the students and more stares and whispers. Lily, unaware of the reason for the text on the board, scribbled something on her notebook while Agnes carried on with her English classwork. To Agnes’s surprise, Lily’s eyes didn’t shine as much as they usually did everyday.

As soon as the class ended and the recess bell tolled, Lily ran after Ms. Agnes and showed her the sketch she had made for the wooden chair she wanted to make for her. Smiling at her, she patted her head and walked to the teacher’s room to deal with the happenings of the day. Lily with her feet made of lead today could only follow her for a few steps before the doors closed and silence engulfed her once more.

As the hours became days and days became a week, the Brussel sprouts in her head just kept growing. Jumping from one leaf to another like a leaf hopper looking for a better view of the forest, Lily kept jumping between her garden of thoughts. The silence had set deeper into her and all she could visualize right now was how to grow the biggest lettuce bulb that ever was in this world. She would need a harness to climb the peak of the juicy lettuce and would definitely need a bit of winter protection to shield her soft, cartilaginous ears from the cold breeze. The town had become more like fingernails just about to scratch the blackboard, dark and sinister and the classroom had become a choir of whispers and giggles. Uncharacteristically, Ms. Agnes had decided to take her lunch breaks outside the teacher’s lounge and she sat alone under a tree outside the school. Something had broken the charm and Lily, unable to grasp the gravity of the situation kept her legs, lead heavy and her mind, full of giant foggy lettuces. Some nights of lettuce fantasies were arbitrarily disturbed by loud, cacophonous diatribes blasting through cheap microphones and funnel shaped tinfoil.

“The cobblestones are whispering, the shutters closing tight,
There’s a shadow in the schoolhouse burning candles through the night.
She arrived with a suitcase and an accent sharp as glass,
Now she’s inviting every “vulture” to sit inside her class.
They call her Fräulein “Traitor,” preaching mercy to the lost,
While we’re counting up the damage and we’re calculating cost.
Polishing the rusted, she’s feeding all the strays,
Turning “notorious” nobodies into a public maze.”

After school, when the corridors emptied and the dust of chalk settled, some of the boys she taught did not go home to quiet kitchens or patient parents. They walked instead to Ms. Agnes’s little house with crooked shutters, where the lamps burned late into the night. There, around a table cluttered with grammar books and cups of cold tea, sat children the town had already judged, pickpockets, vandals, boys who had frightened shopkeepers and broken windows. To Agnes they were simply unfinished sentences, and she insisted on giving them another line, another word, another chance to begin again.


“Eat your food, Lily!”
“What has gotten into you?”

Week had becomes weeks and Lily, the effervescent wildflower had just become a flower being devoured by the worms of incertitude. Her household habits had become chores and the eyes had stopped looking at the toes peeking outside the blanket. She was being kept up by thoughts of Ms. Agnes avoiding her and she was certainly missing the lunch break conversations with her which didn’t involve much words but just gazes of admiration and protection. Agnes on her part had decided to keep the classroom activities more curricular and less of a gladiator retelling her tales of capture and glory. Was the lioness slayed by an invisible force or was she annoyed by something is what kept Lily on her toes and her scribbling became more jittery and anxious.
Unable to resist her stasis, Lily decided to follow Ms. Agnes when she went for the lunch break under the tree outside the school.

Running after her with the usual nimbleness unseen lately, she managed to grab Agnes’s attention with her foray into the unknown. Looking up at the sparrow sitting on the branch, she asked, “Are you okay, Ms. Agnes?”

Smiling with a reticent smile, “I am okay, Lily”, she responded. “Most people”, she said while brushing crumbs from her book, “look at the dirt and see only weeds”. But a teacher must look longer than that. Beneath the mud there are seeds waiting for the right season.”

Lily did not entirely understand the words then, but she liked the idea of people growing quietly beneath the surface like carrots and potatoes, hidden until the day they pushed themselves toward the sun. Agnes took out the sandwich from her bag and offered it to Lily. Just as she was about to ask her another question, the cheap, dissonance of the funnel shaped tinfoil blared again,

“You forgotten what they did? We remember every scar,
The arson in the warehouse, the glass from every car.
Little “Marco” didn’t just skip a day of school,
He put a blade to a throat and he broke every rule!
Remember “Vince”? Set the shelter on fire,
Now he’s sitting in her class like a saint in a choir?
They’re muggers and dealers, they’re wolves in the dark,
But she’s got ’em drawing pictures in the town square park.
She thinks a little grammar fixes brains that are broke?
While the shops stay boarded from the fire and the smoke!”

Puzzled by the noise again, Lily looked at Ms. Agnes looking for some help. But contrary to her expectations, all she got was a note of dismissal.

“You should go back to the classroom, peaches. It’s not safe for you right now.”

And then one day, it finally happened. Resigned, defeated and silent, Ms. Agnes decided to call it a day. No more lectures, no more smiles and none of that gladiator confidence. Lily lost her lead feet and her usual  extemporaneous behaviour. Classes became just like household chores and words became speech in her brain. Winter had definitely set in her brain and she couldn’t conjure up a woolen beanie for her cold cartilaginous ears. No more the words looked like images in her head and no more the leaves of lettuce seemed springy. The murkiness of the swamp had engulfed her and she was unable to find a way to start her little boat. Unable to ask questions about Ms. Agnes, she had become isolated in the classroom where the attacks of paper ball grenades had increased and the whispers had become odious. Her toes lacking any sort of colour these days had become quite symmetrical and she wasn’t able to figure out the contrast in them. For days, she scouted the teacher’s lounge for the sight of her hero but all she could see were chairs and tables filled with notebooks and papers. They talked about things about in hushed tones and Lily wasn’t sure if they made any sense. Some were calling her traitor of the town, some were calling her a Jihadist and some even attempted to call her a spy running a club. Now, Lily unable to fathom the meaning of those words wasn’t sure about the veracity of those conversations but she had no way to find out. Her parents always busy with their incredible ability to abandon people and occupied with their usual carcinogenic smoke weren’t able to quell her doubts either. Friends were far and few those days for Lily and all she could do was sleep in her bed at night and imagine jumping from one leaf to another. The tinfoil microphones and the loudness engulfed her at times.


“She’s a traitor in a blazer, a rebel with a book,
Giving back the power to the killer and the crook!
Lock ’em in a cage where the animals belong,
Before she teaches ’em to hide where they went wrong.
It’s a riot in the making, it’s a town under siege,
And she’s the one providing ’em the criminal prestige!”

Unable to tolerate the clamour around her, Lily decided to take the most extreme action she had ever taken. Leaving her fantasy filled mind to the comfort of her mattress, she decided to sketch Ms. Agnes’s face on a piece of paper. Her talent was prodigious but she wasn’t the artist that could have been hired by the local law enforcement for facial sketches yet. Using her unsharpened pencils and crayons from her art box, she started making little sketches of Agnes every night before going to sleep. Singular pages started piling up on her wooden desk and in no time, she was able to draw Agnes in her most beautiful and resplendent form. Sometimes with an armour glistening in the sun to sometimes a fairy with translucent wings reflecting the early morning sunlight. There were times when she could even draw Agnes with her eyes closed and it turned out to be single line stick figure. All those nights when she burnt the midnight oil, her parents never bothered or questioned her late night revelries.

Was it due to indifference or was it due to their constant confidence in Lily’s isolation? One could only guess.

After a month of sketching Agnes on her white blank papers, she had decided to start a search mission for the lost one. Never before she had left the comfort of her fantastical world and the new avenue scared her. The grass beneath her feet started to feel more somber and it wasn’t as soft or cold as she expected it to be. In a world run by powerful men and a few select women, she was just a little girl trying to find her lost hero. She didn’t know how to find a person but she had seen enough of the idiot box in her house to do the simplest task a child could do. Every tree, every lamp post and every fire hydrant could serve as a board for her artwork to be displayed without any penalty. Every tree she ever wanted to touch and hug could provide her with the necessary friction to stick Ms. Agnes’s sketch. Every lamp post despite being more than 10 feet could provide her with at least 3 feet of height so her little fingers could glue the sketches. If glue ran out, she could steal some of her father’s tape from the garage and that provided enough strength to hold the thought on those inanimate objects. Walking to school, she decided to make it a habit to stick those stick figures and sometimes elaborate representations of her hero on those columns of strength. People looked at her with strange expressions and there were people who wanted to remove those sketches from the poles.

Tears weren’t always her most comfortable outpours but when the pencil ran out of graphite, the paper on the wooden desk became slightly heavy with arbitrary drops of salt water. Sometimes her fingers could become violent and they would crush those papers incredibly hard and make them into balls of frustration. The world of fantasy was starting to fill up with an unknown weight of emotions. She wasn’t sure if the tides were within her because of any underground movement but the coastal boundaries were awash with unforeseen emotions. She was bobbing up and down and being rocked like a dinghy at the mercy of Poseidon’s anger. She wanted to lash out at the people who were constantly taking down her drawings from trees, walls and lamp posts. The hurricane inside was starting to blow up a constant urge to ask questions but answers were nowhere to be found. Every day an uncertain tidal rush engulfed her and her strength to even lift the wee pencil became increasingly hard. The leaves of lettuce left her head at night and were replaced by aggressive thoughts. Flowers were replaced by lawnmowers, clouds were replaced by chimney stacks, beetles were replaced by medical syringes and birds were replaced by meat grinders. It was a strange world she was experiencing and the love within her was becoming even stranger. The dissonance she used to love was becoming more grisly. She was struggling and the snakes were closing on her garden of bloom with each passing day. The sounds outside her window were getting louder and the bird wasn’t always coming back to her nest to take care of her gentle eggs. She was struggling and yet she was able to muster enough courage to draw one image everyday. People were calling her “Traitor’s little girl” at times and her classmates attacked her with indecent grenades of insult and hatred. Lily was struggling and once again, loneliness was knocking at her door.

“We seen this before, yeah, the history is red,
When a charismatic leader gets in a youth’s head.
She’s polishing boots that’ll stomp on our doors,
Turning petty criminals into her soldiers for wars.
“Rehabilitation?” No, it’s “Indoctrination,”
A borderless threat to the peace of our nation.
If we don’t break the camp, if we don’t burn the books,
We’ll be ruled by the teacher and her army of crooks!”

The little town had expanded its vicious claws into every system of growth and had finally managed to break into Lily’s garden of bloom. Magic was finally replaced by fortification and dissonance was ultimately held by the deathly strange hold of the snakes. She looked at her parents and found no help neither in the form of words nor action. All she could hear were distant calls of ” Why don’t you come back home?”

After a few months of conducting her search operation and losing a few pounds of weight, the flower had finally shrivelled with lack of nutrition and sleep. Her eyes had sunk deeper into the continental shelf bordering her coasts and her drawings had become more simpler and quick to recognize. Her parents had scolded her for the first few times they caught her sticking drawings on the trees but then they lost themselves in their constant smoke filled ambience. And then one day, she decided to quit the job of searching for her hero because the hole had been dug too deep and there was no way for her to find the colours necessary to illuminate them anymore. As she was done sticking the last drawing she had managed to draw that sunny Sunday afternoon by the tree at the end of her street, she felt a hand on her shoulder. It wasn’t cold like she had expected it to be and she failed to recognize the weight of the person behind her. Before she could turn around, she was pulled by her shirt into a vehicle. The gloved hand had managed to muffle her cries but she wasn’t crying out loud. She was low on energy and the person had somehow detected that and decided to force themselves on her. Carried into the vehicle that sunny afternoon, she could only wonder if the world around her had finally put an end to her curiosity. Snakes had coiled around her and cheap zip ties were used to control her flinging arms. Her fingers which had sketched a million things all those nights before were crushed by the weight of an adult body which was fully clothed and masked. The vehicle with ever changing gravity was swerving through the lanes as she could feel her stomach going through the rollercoaster. She could see trees and she could see people walking on the sidewalks from the window but everything seemed to be hazy. She could see fire from the corner of her eyes and she could hear the sirens of a firetruck in the background. Her eyes were burning and the poison was starting to finally infect her. The vehicle burped calls for someone and the music was as loud as the beating of her heart.

“You’re not a teacher, you’re an accomplice.
They don’t need a desk, they need a cell.
Take your “second chances” back to mountains
Or follow ’em straight to hell.”

And then finally the sound of a heavy iron gate slamming shut.

“Let’s have her while they decide what to do with this rat,” someone mumbled while Lily lay flat on the ground on her side. Still tied by zip ties and gagged by a black cloth, she could make out some shadows walking in the haze. Her vision was blurry and her thoughts were incoherent, even more incoherent than they had ever been. Her legs were still attached to her torso but they seemed to lack any power to move. Her insides were screaming with pain but the pain was held at bay by a mysterious force strangling her. She could feel the vulnerability she had never felt but she was paralyzed by a potent venom running through her veins. Her stomach felt like it was regurgitating food but her throat burnt if someone had poured acid in her mouth. Her breathing was labored and she struggled to hold on to any chain of thought. Her chest was being crushed by an invisible straitjacket and her ribs tasted like metal rods thumping loudly in a church. The place seemed like an iron carriage with a state of regressive gloom as the masked knaves laid hands upon her. Just before the toxins evaporated her final reserves of courage, came a voice piercing through the haze like a silver whip.

“Begone, ye atomies of the night!”

With a wand no thicker than a grey coated gnat’s wing, she stepped out to mar their mischief. With a flick, she wove a web of spider’s legs and gossamer light. The arrogant legs of muscled men, once supporting their wicked ideas, transmuted into brittle cricket’s bones that snapped beneath the weight of her spell. Her students, once the bane of the town, like Mercutio’s fey cast handfuls of stardust, small grey coated sparks that blinded the villains with the brilliance of a thousand dreams.

The kidnappers grip dissolved like a lazy finger in the wind. Lily, confused was lifted, light as a summer mist and deposited safely amidst the flowers of care.

Then, with a final stroke of her wand, the fairy turned their very breath to agate-stones, heavy and cold in their thieving chests. The masked men, now tangled in a trace of the smallest spider’s web, fell into a slumber as deep as a courtier’s dream of fees. With a final pop of ozone, the iron beast and its shadow-men vanished, leaving only the scent of crushed thyme and the echo of a fairy’s laugh.

And she heard this before she finally closed her eyes to get the sleep she needed.

“……Oh, then I see Queen Mab hath been with you….”

A yawn after a hundred days of slumber and a stretch that relaxed each muscle and sinew. Her eyes, heavy with years of doubt and confusion finally fluttered as if a young butterfly was trying to break through the cocoon. Her fingers, soft and short like little knobs on an old radio were starting to shake off the dust of hubris. The minor indentations of her right thumb and the little hills of dead skin cells on her middle finger after years of sketching finally felt the blood humming through them. Opening her eyes gingerly to get the first light in a long time, Lily finally felt the cold breeze on her cartilaginous ears. There was light all around her and it wasn’t sharp or skeptical. It was warm light hugging her in an embrace she desperately needed every morning she woke up. The ceiling fan above her was replaced by white clouds which were shaped like cows and dogs. No wonder they mooed like cows when they bumped into each other. They weren’t grey and she raised her hand to pull some of the cotton fluff from those clouds. She looked around her and she could feel little green coloured veins holding her in place on this strange island. She didn’t feel they were chaining her down, they felt like life lines running around her providing her with food and love.

Standing up on her free legs once again wasn’t easy but she managed to regain her balance on this hyperbolic plane. Green everywhere, lines running like highways around her and the plane converging like a triangle as far as her eyes could see. Was it the place she had always dreamt of? Rubbing her eyes to clear the haze, she ran towards the edge of the plane albeit stumbling due to the ground shifting with each step of hers. The view was beautiful and her heart finally caught what her brain had been throwing all these years. The world looks remarkably different when the feet are planted in a vein of emerald green cellulose rather than dusty ground. For Lily, the giant butterhead lettuce leaf felt like a springy, living trampoline, cool to the touch and smelling of rain and crisp earth. She finally got the help she always needed.

Standing atop the highest leaf each day, Lily peered over a ruffled, translucent edge. Agnes had taught her that the garden wasn’t a patch of dirt around her, it was a dense, multi layered jungle pulsing with life.

For the world who always looked below, the ones who made mistakes were always dark, damp and mulched, crisscrossed by massive, fallen logs of twigs. But if you looked at it with a child’s eyes, you could see a glistening, wet trail marked by a recently surfaced worm leaving behind a miniature mountain range of tilled soil. For those who got infected at a young age, sterilization wasn’t necessary as those clumps of emerald moss looked like velvet cushions, hiding tiny puddles that reflected the sky like sapphire mirrors.

As Ms. Agnes made her aware that she was never alone in this sprawling metropolis despite residing in the high lettuce tower, she took notice of the fuzzy, lime green stalks of tomato plants rise high up to her left with heavy,   glowing globes of crimson that smelled of summer heat whereas to her right stood the tall, purple lavender spires sending her a gentle and thick breeze.

Every child thrown into the fire of cruelty and every heart ripped apart by a system that believed in vengeance barricaded the growth of this garden and every time a teacher stood up to fight this injustice, a war ensued. Lily learnt about it when she threw the ideas of violence, retribution and dark elements of the society from the edge of that lettuce leaf over the years. The view was beautiful when the weight holding you back was dumped into the valleys of oblivion. She talked to them, listened to their constant ideas and doubts and sounds they made. Their confusion constantly fueled by hatred from the outside world and their inability to express their anger and their constant chatter. Still throwing things off the cliff, Lily was afraid of the sound of a body slamming against those rocks down below. Unlike the town she grew up in, she paused to see a metallic green sweat bee mid air just inches from her face, its wings moving so fast that they seemed like a golden blur.


Over the years, in the gap between the lettuce and the kale plant, a busy spider kept spinning a silver web. The silk threads catching the sunlight, shimmered like waves frozen in glass. Putting down her pencil colours, she looked outside the window and thought about Ms. Agnes and the wooden chair she had just sketched for her.

She was missing her. And somewhere in the quiet rustle of the lettuce leaves, Lily still imagined a wooden chair waiting for the gardener who had first shown her how to grow a world.