I bite my tongue and swallow the answers.
For once, it’s not my court.
So I play the groundling,
Nodding, smiling and cheering from afar.
When it ends and it does,
I wash the glue off my lips
Scrub the blood off my wounds.
It’s time to return to the ivory tower
Where my court awaits for its absent queen.
∞
Anitha Devi Pillai (PhD) is an applied linguist and teacher educator at National Institute of Education (NTU, Singapore), where she teaches courses on writing pedagogy and writing. She has predominantly researched and published articles based on empirical data on writing and literacy practices. Her creative writing pieces have appeared in local newspapers, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Advaitam Speaks Literary and The Pangolin Review journals among others.
