Shagun Thakur
I want to learn art —
Not the usual kind where you pick up a brush,
But rather flip through pages and analyze,
Like my high school English professor did — Ms. Singhal,
Who circled metaphors like constellations,
And taught me how to read between the lines,
Until even silence felt annotated.
She only taught me in grade eleven.
We studied A Photograph, The Laburnum Top, The Voice of the Rain.
To be fair, I might forget the deeper meanings she taught —
The allusions, the enjambments, the irony.
But I know I’ll never forget the pencil marks in my textbook,
Where her words live quietly in the margins.
Little arrows, circles, and scribbled notes that still whisper her voice
Whenever I flip a page.
Then came grade twelve — and with it, a new voice.
The poems were still lovely —Keeping Quiet, Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers, My Mother at Sixty-Six.
But as we read of a daughter watching her mother grow distant,
I thought of Ms. Singhal, how her absence somehow felt the same.
Still near, still known, but just out of frame.
A bit dramatic, but poetry makes space for that.
As she was the difference between reading poetry and feeling it.
So yes, I want to learn art —
Not the art that involves colours and strokes,
But the kind that rewrites you quietly.
I want to learn that art.
To see stories where others see skin.
To listen the way Ms. Singhal read —
Like everything mattered,
Even the silence.
Maybe that’s the art:
Not making, but meaning.