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A Little Less Losing

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Harshita Jain Jayshree Periwal High School, Jaipur · India Poetry · October 2026
It's said that when you lose your mind,
you find your soul.
But what if I don't?
What if I beat the odds?
It can't be that hard... right?

It's said that failure is the key to success.
But what if I don't want to fail?
What if I don't want to feel like a loser?

Yet I couldn't beat the odds.

As the paper stared back at me
I glared back.
For the vast sky was standing tall.
So were the coconut trees.
Let's live—just once.
Let's live as though the monkey snatched those worries away instead of the banana.

Perhaps that's how you can push through the crowd wearing the stolen crown.
Perhaps that's how you rewrite pages of a notebook you were never supposed to reach for.

I just wish
I had known that sooner.
Author's Note Preparing for CLAT, when so much of your life revolves around mock scores, ranks, and the constant urge to do better, it becomes surprisingly easy to forget that a disappointing result is only one moment in a much larger life. I first wrote this in about two minutes, trying to make sense of my own relationship with failure and the pressure to succeed.
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About the Author Harshita Jain Jayshree Periwal High School, Jaipur · India

Harshita Jain is a writer from Jaipur, India, and a student at Jayshree Periwal High School.

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