The chemistry lab!

There was a time
When I had no choice
But to go to the chemistry lab
Of my school.

Out of the PCM,
In which I was thrown
‘C’ for chemistry,
Was the only subject
In which I could pass
For ‘P’ and ‘M’
Were always an ‘F’

The chemistry lab,
Where titration meant
Ensuring exact number
Of drops of one liquid
In the other liquid
To get a baby pink kind
Of a colour.

The chemistry lab,
Where this weird smell
Would sometimes hit me
So hard that I could faint
But I never did,
Probably because
I would’ve choked myself
To death, if I ended up
In the physics lab
Or the maths classroom.

The chemistry lab,
Where the pockets of my lab coat
Were full of pens and test tubes
So that I didn’t miss a chance
To note what it takes to get
That perfect shade of lime green
And test tubes so that
There’s always enough room
For mixing some sodium
With some salt which
Could give that lime green colour.

The chemistry lab,
The place where I
Fell in love with
A particular shade of lime green
Which was somewhere between
The green of the pine leaves
And a raw lemon,
The green which is crystal clear in my head
But has never been seen by my eyes,
The green which became the oxygen
On the days when the pressure of
Clearing PCM exams took all of me
But didn’t kill me.

The chemistry lab,
Where it was okay to fail
You could just maybe say,
‘I put a stale salt’
Or maybe the molecules were tight
You knew you could
Come up with something to save yourself.

The chemistry lab,
The only place I could
Breathe easy,
Survive
Till the maths classroom
Came to me with a dagger
And the physics lab
Ran after me to shred
My being.

The chemistry lab,
A ray of sunshine
In the dingiest tunnel
The oxygen
In the school where
Breaths were snatched.

The chemistry lab,
Which helped me
Survive,
To see the moonlit sky
And sunkissed afternoons
Which I today,
Instagram with pride.

The chemistry lab.