Between Hallways and Horizons!

By Nandini Tandon

Summer's sun stretches long
Into unstructured days
no alarm clocks, no homework,
Only echoes of empty hallways.

I wander at home like a ghost
Laziness always ready to be my host.
Friends scatter in waves, some gone already
some still home, stumbling through their own silence.
In this soft suspended time,
I tasted freedom as unripe fruit, sweet but fuzzy with uncertainty.

At night I listen to conversations
"This is the best time of my life",
But the absence of purpose feels heavy in my chest.
The mail stops knowing my name, summer stretches wide.
Days unfold in blank pages, not yet written not yet bound.

In afternoon with no homework
I taste time like open sky
it's freedom edged with what's next?
Night drifts in slowly,
no school bell to pull me back.

I lie awake, caught between yesterday's volume and tomorrow's hush.
This is my summer prologue:
no more a student of halls,
no longer a traveller without destination.
A pause- a breathe,
Before the story begins again.