Bead by Bead poem

I rarely post fiction or poetry on this blog. Diamonds for him was an exception. But I have been writing poems since I was a child following the footsteps of my grandmother and mother. Two Hindi poems – one on Indian textiles and the other on Women’s empowerment (originally written in English and translated in Hindi) have been published in the last year. Looking through my drafts for their original versions, I found the poem – Bead by Bead. I do not remember which publication I intended it for, but the theme was loss. I chose to write about memory loss as I have been going through long bouts of severe brain fog, first as a result of Covid, now perimenopause making me forget a lot of things. This is not a simple lapse of memory but one that has been going for years, making me question my identity, capability, and self-worth. I wrote a bit about it in a post on forgetting and then relearning jewellery making.

The title “Bead by Bead” was originally the title of a story that I narrated at the Chennai International Storytelling Festival in Feb 2021. That story was about a young woman who moves back home after a failed relationship and reinvents herself by making jewellery. But I liked the title so I reused it and applied the reinvention theme to the poem as well. Do take a look.

Bead by Bead

There was once a girl who fell in love
with gemstones that shimmered like stars,
tiny wishes strung on thread,
and jewels that whispered, “make me, wear me, keep me.”

She grew, as girls do,
into a woman with hands clever as sparrows,
turning concepts into colours,
knowledge into knots,
silence into stories,
bringing smiles on every face that wore them.

Her life became a necklace that she put together
bead by bead,
connecting various strands,
using findings and spacers,
charms and clasps.

But time, sly as a trickster,
slipped a fog over her thoughts.

Patterns unravelled,
beads went missing,
strings snapped in her mind.
She forgot where the joy was kept,
forgot how a bead becomes a world.

As hormones rose and fell
She wandered beadless,
loveless, pockets empty, fingers restless.

Until fate, like a mischievous cat curled up in her lap,
and reminded her how to loop a bead.
She threaded love, a gemstone she had left,
which even when forgotten, remembered her and her joys.

Bead by bead,
She put her life back together
Learning to savour the joys it brought her
Worried about the day,
The strand would fray again.

While the poem ends on a melancholic note, it is not meant to be depressing. It is meant as a tool to raise awareness for a medical issue that takes incredible amount of time and money to get diagnosed and still has no proper treatment. If you identify with the cause, or are suffering from brain fog or knows someone going through the same, please share the poem. I hope that they find not just comfort but a solution to their issues. 

I hope you find it interesting.
Cheers
Divya N