I, Childhood

 


I, Childhood


Today, of all days,
let me speak.
I am Childhood—
the soft wind that once
ran barefoot through your ribs,
the laughter that filled your days
so completely, it had no place to hide.

I look around now,
and I see children
who do not get to meet me.

Their faces are young,
but their days are not.
They walk with backpacks
filled with expectations
that do not belong to them.
They speak in words
borrowed from grown-ups,
as if innocence were something
to be outgrown quickly,
like last year’s shoes.

They scroll, swipe, mimic, perform—
hurrying to become
what the world claps for,
and losing the art
of becoming themselves.

Parents, with love heavy as worry,
stitch their own unfinished stories
onto these small shoulders,
hoping their children
will walk straighter
than they ever could.
But sometimes—
a straight path
is not a joyful one.

Yet beyond the screens
and the rush of cities,
in dusty lanes
and half-lit classrooms,
I still find a home.

In rural mornings
where schoolbags swing freely,
where a child runs simply
because there is space to run;
where marbles, cocoons,
chalk powder, and monsoon puddles
still have rights over imagination;
where a girl laughs
with her whole face
and not just the practiced half
saved for photographs.

But even there—
even in the villages
where I was once king—
I feel the quiet tremor
of the world’s noise approaching,
slipping in quietly
through the glow of technology,
and carrying with it lessons and pressures
that arrive too early—
before questions
are allowed to grow.

So today, let me say this:
I want to live again.
Not in young bodies
rushed into adulthood,
but in children—
children who are allowed
to giggle at nothing,
to play without purpose,
to fail without fear,
to belong to the present
instead of a future
someone else is drafting.

Let me sit beside them
in classrooms,
run with them in courtyards,
hide in their pockets
as they climb mango trees,
and whisper to them gently
that there is time—
time to grow,
time to dream,
time to simply be.

On this Children’s Day,
all I ask is this:
let childhood return
to those who deserve it most.
Let me be their companion,
their mischief,
their lightness,
their space to breathe.

For I am Childhood—
and I have been waiting
far too long
to come home.

Comments

  1. AnonymousNovember 14, 2025 at 6:57 AM

    Excellent!! So true. It is time for children to get back their childhood.

    ReplyDelete

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