The Sovereign Child - my poem published in the 'Tolly Tatler', Spring Edition, 2026.

 The Sovereign Child

From swaddled breath to independent stride,
The human soul rehearses many selves.
Each season sheds a skin, assumes a shape,
Until the mirror holds a stranger’s gaze.
From borrowed names and handed-down belief
We journey toward a voice we call our own.
Some truths we keep from hearths that warmed our youth,
Some truths we bend, and some we cast aside.

The child becomes a country unto self,
With borders drawn by conscience, choice, and doubt.
No writ of claim endures beyond the womb;
No parent holds the copyright of fate.
Love does not grant dominion over will,
Nor memory confers the right to rule.

Two sovereign lives may share a familiar road,
Yet walk by stars that differ in their pull.
They meet at points of laughter and of grief,
And part at questions neither can resolve.
Wisdom resides in learning what to hold,
And what, in kindness, must be let alone.

When arms grow tight with fear of being lost,
They bruise the very bond they seek to save.
When grown children forget the debts of care,
They salt the soil where gratitude once grew.
Both wounds are born of not seeing the other,
As fully, fiercely, human in their right.

Let strangers greet the adult as they stand,
Not as a shadow trailing someone’s name.
For lineage explains but never binds;
It frames a start, not destiny’s last word.
The world moves ill when crowns are handed down,
As if the blood itself conferred the mind.

So may we learn the difficult, bright art
Of loving without chains, of free accord:
To bless the paths we did not choose ourselves,
And walk with our children, not ahead nor behind.

xxxxx ------  xxxxx

The following page is an image of my poem as published in the Tolly Tatler, Spring Edition, 2026. It is the magazine of the Tollygunge Club, Kolkata.