The Third One

By Pragyaan Gaur
19 | Delhi, India
First-place young adult contest winner, Global Health category

With lines from "Polluted Minds" by Sherry Baker, a Pulitzer Center-supported story

The TV calls it a “pollution holiday,” but we are not allowed to play.
My school shoes sit empty by the front door,
next to the thick masks that smell like old breath.
The white machine in the corner hums a steady red,
chewing the air and giving it back.

I don’t mind the locked doors today.
I have a new encyclopedia of the universe.

I sit on my bed, tracing Saturn’s rings with my thumb,
memorizing the three bright dots of Orion’s Belt.

In the evening, I press my forehead
against the cold window glass
to see where space begins.

It doesn’t begin anywhere today.

Just a yellow-grey layer
that tastes like burnt rubber
even with the window shut.

I keep looking for something to come through.
Nothing does.

Mummy pushes rolled-up newspaper under the door crack.
She says it’s smoke, not clouds.

On her phone, a woman on the news is talking fast.
I hear her say,
“The air we breathe … all of that gets translated into our biology.”

Biology.

I say it once, quietly, to see what it feels like.

My throat scratches when I swallow.

I go back to Jupiter’s moons.

Io.
Europa.
Ganymede.

I read them again.

Io.
Europa.

I stop.

The third one is there
but not yet.

My head feels slow,
I close my eyes

and try to redraw the sky.

Three stars in a line.

I can place two.

The third keeps shifting
a little to the left,
then gone.

I open the book again.

Saturn is still there,
but the rings look thinner now.

I press my thumb over them,
so they don’t fade.

Outside, the sky stays closed.

Inside, I read the same line again
without noticing.

Pragyaan Gaur is a freshman studying Engineering Physics at the National Institute of Technology Agartala. He is interested in scientific computing and is currently working on projects in heliophysics, industrial desulfurization, and combinatorial geometry. In his free time, Pragyaan likes to read books, play the piano, and make web games.

Read more winning entries from the 2026 Fighting Words Poetry Contest.