#the world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire
My 13 year old cousin came back from a date with her boyfriend and said, “I can’t wait to grow up and spend sunday afternoons with him.” At first, I wanted to laugh (after all they’re just 13), but I remember being 13 and having the world in my hands. I remember getting excited to talk to someone about my dreams and wishes, and how happy these daydreams and fantasies made me. There’s this innocence you can only have at 13 and the world rises and falls and crashes and burns every year… until you do not think about quiet sunday afternoons.
So I asked her about the date and heard her giggle about bubblegum flavored ice cream, and how much she loves this little life. I think she makes me love it too.
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire
My brother cracked my rib one morning and gave me half of his orange in the evening.
I remember being younger and sometimes wishing to be a single child, to have all the attention and gifts and time but when he was away from home for the first time, I remember crying and stroking his side of the sofa as if blurting out my first wish- for him to be home, without thinking twice, without a shadow of doubt. Even the genie cried. Growing up with a sibling is like being the only people on a stranded boat, constantly figuring out how you can live with them and questioning how you could ever live without them.
One evening, in a fit of anger, I told him how I never wanted him to be my brother and he yelled that he didn’t ask for it either. The air smelled like kerosene and my chest was filled with arsenic. I was raging and threw his favorite toy aeroplane down the window, 7 stories of guilt and shame. He cried all night and I wanted to cut off my right hand, the hand that hurt my baby brother. I didn’t know if he was ever going to forgive me or even talk to me. The next morning at breakfast, he didn’t look at me or say a word, I felt like my chest was about to explode and guilt clouded my vision. But then, I felt a hand quietly holding half of an orange my way.
The only people on a stranded boat. How do you live with them? How could you ever live without them?
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire
Edit: I added a visualizer for this on my YouTube channel. Check it out here
My 13 year old cousin came back from a date with her boyfriend and said, “I can’t wait to grow up and spend sunday afternoons with him.” At first, I wanted to laugh (after all they’re just 13), but I remember being 13 and having the world in my hands. I remember getting excited to talk to someone about my dreams and wishes, and how happy these daydreams and fantasies made me. There’s this innocence you can only have at 13 and the world rises and falls and crashes and burns every year… until you do not think about quiet sunday afternoons.
So I asked her about the date and heard her giggle about bubblegum flavored ice cream, and how much she loves this little life. I think she makes me love it too.
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire
…it was almost like seeing myself as a token or prize whose worth is decided by the man who holds it.
-Ritika Jyala, I love Pink(source)
…so I spent my 20s reclaiming barbie dolls and lip gloss, pink and skirts and everything I had once denounced for the fear of being ‘cringe’.
-Ritika Jyala, I love Pink (source)
The first boy who liked me told me how he thought I was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen and how much he’d love to be with me. And I know that he was just a kid and didn’t mean any harm but it instilled this thought in me that being pretty was the only way I could attract people, that I had to give parts of myself to others in order to feel validated; it was almost like seeing myself as a token or prize whose worth is decided by the man who holds it. I began focusing on how much people would love to be with me rather than how much I enjoyed their company and that’s a big burden to carry at 11.
And after years of feeling trapped, I decided it was enough and tried to hate pink and makeup and skirts and everything I had loved as a child because I associated those things with the idea of performance. Again, I lost sight of what I liked and enjoyed, so I spent my 20s reclaiming barbie dolls and lip gloss, pink and skirts and everything I had once denounced for the fear of being ‘cringe’.
-Ritika Jyala, I love Pink, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire
Sometimes I think this world is a bad place, but then I look around me and in all its chaos and mosaic of bodies and souls and dreams, I see beauty and goodness hidden behind kind eyes and rough hands.
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire
(read the whole thing here)
Sometimes I think this world is cruel and unjust but then I remember how I dropped my wallet when I was on the bicycle 8 years ago and a homeless man ran 6 blocks to return it to me. Sometimes I think this world is lonely and grey but then I let the rain touch my body and hear birds make their way home at evening and for a moment, just a moment- I understand why Prometheus stole fire and laid it at man’s feet, why dying stars leave a trail of wishes, why I still love 6-year-old Erica I met on a summer trip a decade ago, even though I never saw her again.
Sometimes I think this world is a bad place, but then I look around me and in all its chaos and mosaic of bodies and souls and dreams, I see beauty and goodness hidden behind kind eyes and rough hands.
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire
As a child, I had been obsessed with black holes. I wanted to know what it meant when people said they felt nothing, how everything- all of the universe and all of their life could fit inside nothing.
When you’re a child, you cannot fathom seeing nothing when there’s the sun, plants and broken parts of machines to look at, it feels impossible to be empty. I asked my grandpa if it hurt when he lost his left ear in the war. He tells me his brother lost his life. But did it hurt?, I ask again. Grandpa says it still hurts. I don’t know if he’s talking about his ear. Sometimes I see him drinking alone at night, tears rolling silently on either cheek and I understand how sometimes nothing can feel safer, how black holes devour the universe- and are still empty.
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire
Grandpa always carried the rope grandma made before she died- a string of yellow, red and purple. And I tried to write a poem about that but it’s not easy to make poems about a love that survived death, a love that kept living even when the lovers perished.
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire
