If Only

She stood in the corner of the street, away from cold stares and heartless whispers as she shuddered under the raging thunder. The noise of pointless pencil heels and the dazzle of temporarily luxurious jewellery distracted her, almost for a second, till she remembered her own blistered toes and torn clothes and looked away, knowing she would always be so very close to the immaterial materialistic part of human life and yet be so far away.
No matter how much she tried to reach out, to delicately brush her fingers across all the lavishness she desperately longed for but could never have, she was unable to get close enough.

The lightning flashed across the sky, playing hide-and-seek with the world as it winked in a flash of a second, depriving the people of clarity. It reminded her of the sadistic jingle of coins that came from purses branded with money that could have instead been used to feed children like her and the crisp sharpness of notes that had the face of a man she would never be able to learn about.
A man who fought for the country without an inkling of the state it now was in with the alarming rates of malnutrition and poverty that affected the people, more so the innocent children who did not know the horrors of their lives.
A man who died a little too soon before he could see how much transformation lit up the lives of the rich and buried the hearts of the poor.
A man who would not expect nor want the cruelty that was stepping on children struggling to afford even one meal a day, let alone three.

And so, she stood, trying to take shelter from the harsh rain drops that would pierce her delicate skin, wrought from the exposure of the terrible mixture of pollution and human hatred. But as it actually began to pour, people seemed to finally see her, or so she thought, till they rushed towards the iron ledge she managed to hold on to for herself. As they pushed her out of the tiny space of comfort she would get for weeks to come, she looked up at the pairs of eyes that refused to see beyond the obvious.

She walked away in the rain, shivering as the water got through the numerous tears in her clothes and found their way towards her hauntingly obvious ribs and the inward curve of her abdomen while, in a painful contrast, most other kids her age were healthy from eating off plates instead of garbage cans.

As an inward shudder escaped her and she heard her stomach growl from hunger, she felt herself go dizzy till she gave in to her boiling skin and the pain in her bones, falling to the floor in a dead faint. It was hours before she spotted but by then it was too late.

Her battered heart had given up on her.

If only.

This post is a part of the #Vote4Children Blog-a-thon on 
Youth Ki Awaaz. 
Find out more at: http://www.youthkiawaaz.com/vote4children