by Ruchi Acharya
Courage isn’t in counting chicks
before their fragile shells collapse—
it’s in feeding them hope
when they’re trembling in your hands.
Have you asked yourself this in a while?
Hope is a mother hen;
even in storms she spreads her wings,
a shelter stitched of feathers.
Will you do the same for me?
In fear, the bravest scatter,
like startled chickens at the clap of night.
So let us scatter fear
to its own dark corners,
where it can shiver alone.
Chickens teach us patience—
peck by peck, a belly fills.
(And yes, I confess,
I’m still a meat-eater from Delhi.)
Kindness is a fragile egg,
but inside, a future stirs.
Even the proudest rooster
was once a trembling chick,
a soft heartbeat in the nest.
Never mock a chicken’s scratch;
it’s a script of survival in the dirt,
a testimony to persistence,
a hymn etched in the earth.
Ruchi Acharya (b. 1995) is the Founder & CEO of Wingless Dreamer Publisher, a global literary platform. An Oxford graduate in English Literature, her poetry book “Off the Cliff” is available on Amazon. Featured in 100+ journals like Borderless Journal and The Washington Review, she champions literature and culture. Based in Mumbai, she explores history and nurtures writers.