Happy Clowns

Everyone gathers, fastening their bonnets

The circus is about to open

Take your places

Clowns and jesters mount their spheres

Balancing life with a practised fear

We begin as kids

With balls as soft as cotton

Every stumble, every tumble

Falls into clouds

No balance, just laughs out loud

The ground never knew our names

Red and black diamond skins

colours that faded long ago

Our faces creased like linen

Holding the falls, we never took

The stars above burn bright 

Soft laughter at what we’ve become

Ssh… ssh… they’re here,

The ringmaster snaps the silence.

We stand,

Fastening our borrowed smiles

Beneath our feet

The spheres whisper our names

The skirts flare in the air

Like blue bright answers

dresses built for motion

No rest shall be given

dancing as if the floor is lava

Spheres, the only fragile proof of safety

No centres,

Only orbits,

A quiet agreement with gravity

We never signed. 

Unlike our faces,

The dresses forget

each fold unlearns itself,

Each motion erases the last.

We become them 

Poised on our fragile spheres

Ankles learning the language of risk

Keeping it all within

How long can balance pretend?

How long before the ground remembers us?

How long till the lava rises and engulfes our despair?

The slow red tide waiting below,

certain as time, 

promising release in its burn.

Will it take us whole?

skirts, motion, the endless turning

The careless illusion of control

I feel, no matter how much I build upon myself, I won't amount to anything. Whatever I do, I will still fall short of someone and something. No matter how many pieces I tore myself into, there will always be voices reducing it to luck or to timing.

As if my achievements are only conceivable if my sufferings were visible.

There will always be a new ladder to climb,

A constant reminder that she is better than me.

Another person that climbed faster than me

With cleaner hands

Unshaken soul

Meanwhile I keep balancing on my orb

Performing under light

A proof that I am still undeserving. 

What a fragile thing achievement is! 

It is funny how much meaning we tie not to our achievements but to how others perceive and respond to those lofty goals. We share our wins, not for words but for measurement. 

Did their smile reach their eyes?

Did they pause too long before congratulating me?

Did they mean it?

Do they think I am worthy of it?

Now the win doesn’t belong to me; it belongs to the room. The room I gave consent to rip it from within. Dissecting every action that led me to this.

Perhaps the problem is me. Why would you attach so much meaning to a mere thing? People thinking I am undeserving is not the end of the world; people thinking I need to work more is not a tragedy. Why do I have to make a fuss over everything tiny? 

But how do you explain the feeling of working endlessly for months because you never once felt sufficient? How do you explain the exhaustion of giving everything you have, only to still be second-guessed and still be reduced to “Oh, she just got lucky.”

They do not understand it. Not because they have never worked hard, but because they have never experienced the loneliness that hard work quietly demands.

Hard work is not merely hours spent staring at a screen. It is everything those hours quietly take from you.

Nobody talks about the loneliness that comes with hard work. The worst part is people often misunderstand this loneliness; externally, it looks voluntarily done. You chose to work hard. You chose to be ambitious. So from the outside, it seems absurd to grieve the consequences of something self-imposed.

But ambition quietly consumes your emotional space. Especially when it all becomes tied to your self-worth. As a result, people gradually start to stray. It starts with missing out on inside jokes, then not getting invited to places as oh she’ll say no anyway, and eventually it leads to a point where you are there, but you are invisible. 

It is the tax of becoming. 

I feel maybe this is what evolving means: when you know you worked hard, but there is literally no one to pat you on the back. No one to say, 'I saw you work hard every day, and you did great.'

No applause

No witness to the long nights

Because who saw you work hard? Who saw you show up every day even when you were down?

No one.

I am pretty self-aware. I know I am not accomplished enough to speak of sacrifice like a war veteran or an ambitious person. Not successful enough to romanticise loneliness as the cost of greatness. In the end, I am only 20. 

I am too young to complain about exhaustion. There are people my age working longer hours, building bigger things, sacrificing more, and carrying ambition in their quiet hands. And maybe I am being dramatic, adding poetry to ordinary pains. Probably everyone experiences this; everyone gains the ability to overcome this aspirational isolation. 

But this loneliness still remains. 

It stays in my heart, making it ache. This ache is not loud enough to be tragic but severe enough to be felt. It stays in those conversations, getting shorter every day; invites you never received; and slow cries while looking at a screen. It stays hidden deep within. 

It stays concealed because what do you even say now? How do you go back to those easy days? The ache lingers, a constant reminder of what once was.

The strangest thing is nobody is to be blamed. Your friends keep living. The world keeps moving. Inside jokes disappear and you are merely there to fill a seat.

The scary thing is that from the outside, this big-top tent looks desirable. Clowns are focused, disciplined and consistent. None see the invisible negotiations, the panic of falling down, or the panic of growing out while the audience mistakes endurance for grace. 

The music plays softy

Ringmaster bows slowly

We balance on our orbs

Smiling bright under the light

Hiding every fear in sight

Grinning widely

So nobody notices

How violently our ankles shake. 

- Vidushi Anand