Rock, Paper, Scissors by Mridvi Khetan

Sometimes it’s all a child’s play
Rock
Paper
Scissors
Play it as you may
Her index and middle fingers casually separate to create a fissure,
a lens to see the landscape hidden below her flesh
The scissor-like fingers a part of the overpowering body

A body is nothing but a rock on this earth
Defeating every thing, every finger, every scissor

Until
the paper comes
A paper, the renewed life of nature
with the several inscriptions of men
has the fuel to render every rock useless
Because a body cowers behind papers
The red tape is the dictator
What am I, if not for a paper telling me I’m a citizen?
What am I, if not for a paper to show I’m educated?
What am I, if not for a paper to flaunt for my status?
A body is nothing without its papers
A rock is always defeated by paper
The mountains can vouch for it too
Those hefty structures always losing the game to the clouds

The mountains – a body – perpetually a rock
The clouds – a shapeshifter – mostly a paper enshrouding the peaks
There you have it, the rock defeated again

There is only one way to defeat the paper –
to stretch apart those fingers
Only when the scissors detach from the rock,
the fingers depart from the body
Can the scissors defeat the paper
Only when the talent detaches from the being,
when the art departs from the artist, from the red-taped helpless humans
Can it actually cut through the suffocating boundaries of the paper

So what’s your move?
Rock, Paper or Scissors?