Daughters like you by Srishti Saharia
dearest,
heaven was in cosmical agony
the night you were born;
the gods living in her underbelly
were dueling to settle an affair of
her nebulous honour— or so they
heard to convince themselves in
a futile attempt at reasoning
with their godlike virtue that was stapled to
the razor-sharp pins of violence.
she was looking at the earth
beneath her feet like a mother
looks at the bubbling face of her
newborn for the first time,
when dettol-infused air:
ambitious, aromatic, and
a little nauseating,
whose signature smell—
sometimes hopeful,
sometimes forgiving—
is the hallmark of maternity wards
arguably in every hospital
around the globe,
flooded your blossoming,
china rose-red mouth and lungs
for the first time outside
your mama's womb
daughters like you
are born from the ruins of
the brightest peeled oranges
to deliver under the guise of
the existence of your faces
the only fragments of light
that arrive during winter's
gloomy solstices at
the doorstep of your houses.
daughters like you
inherit their mama's gift
of forgiveness and language
of hope and celebrate with
candor so grand,
as if they have obtained
eternal copyrights from
a god to become one.
daughters like you
listen to the silence
in the rhythm of their mama's
lips when they speak,
and make up words and
pronounce them on
their behalf on their own
before nibbling on and
swallowing them for supper.
daughters like you
are bred and born in
and fed from land [that is
non-existent on men's copies
of maps and poses as
a conundrum to them],
away from the unwelcomed
and strange yet familiarly
hideous and hungry
mouths of gaping men;
you are taught alongside
the english alphabets the diction that even
the mothers of the mothers
of your mothers memorized—
a dialect enigmatic and celestial,
delphic to the hearing capability of men.
in this closed-book universe of diction,
'a' stands for 'avoid';
[ because, you see, apples
can be peeled (and cut
in the absence of
their compliance and consent
to their indecent robbery and
dishonoring of their blood-stained skin)
too easily, and women shouldn't be]
while 'b' brings down the chimney
with it 'breathe' [they don't know
how often womenfolk seem
to shed or lose the instinct in
the paramount part of their brain
that knows how to take in air
with noses and mouths that
are programmed to smell and
taste fear before seeing or
feeling fear because
daughters like you,
are more afraid when
they do not know what
they are afraid of.
'c' sneaks in with 'call'
and the cat drags in 'for help'
which are morphed to be its
silent letters which can be heard
and acknowledged only in
its halo-like, mortal echo,
so listen carefully and well.
the underwhelming 'dogs'
and 'drums' can share the backseat
because in this fiction of a diction,
'damage' rides shotgun with 'd'
to battle for the aux cable
'e' is abandoned by 'eggs' and
'elephants' and are replaced by
'escape' making an appearance
and so on and forth goes on
this peculiar lingo conceived
and baptized solely and wholly for daughters like you.
daughters like you,
however, were never taught how to
create a partition [as strong
as the opinions toxic communities
form of and hold over the heads
of unmarried women over
the age of twenty-five]
to isolate anxiety from
its society-christened phrasing of "attention- seeking"
so, here you are,
twenty-five and then some,
without ever really being embraced
by the privilege to turn your index
to point at a conventional
definition for and motivation behind
all the terrors and jitters
the sound and sight of strangers
create within you;
strangers seem to carry their
strangeness wherever they go,
wherever you go,
like the homeless carry
their homelessness in jute bags.
instead all you find yourself turning
is half your torso under moonless skies
to look behind with every seven steps
you take on the gravel beneath your heels,
while anxiety attacks are fueling
your heart's will to survive
more than to live,
instead of giving up
and arranging your body
into an amalgam known to
the laymen as "mess"
but, dearest, remember,
you are the heaven's god-daughter,
and daughters like you
are the most tender of
tragedies of their mothers,
but also the most ferocious
of felines and the strongest
of their allies in their war against
the hidden mines of terrors that
may detonate with either of
the seven thumps of steps
against the earth and send
another daughter,
just like you,
just like me,
back to our godmother
—heaven's own: daughters like you
I think I am happy again by Mrinalini Karmakar
I think I am happy again
On a grieving Earth, happiness is a sedative,
And the chemist says, “we are out of stock”.
You and I are hemmed in on this planet,
like iron-dust stuck to a magnet.
The event of our separation is a force that equals to a rocket propulsion,
And only failed missions count.
You wear melancholy like your glasses,
so you see a defeat as a defeat
and a victory as the abstract piece of art you bought from a street-side artist,
that you hung on your wall instead of a mirror,
So when you fail and stare at it, only you know you are playing peek-a-boo with your past.
You shed two tears interrogating your worth with questions like
“Where do you see yourself in the next five years?”
Worth has been preparing itself for two decades now, but
Worth stands there with pin drop silence,
And you stand there for an answer,
You nudge your worth,
“Can you see yourself?” When you don’t even have a mirror to see your face.
Peace is a cake and your silence is celebrating its fifteenth birthday of the year,
Peace is in pieces now,
And you don’t dare count.
You say you are out of appetite,
But your mother thinks you need to eat to be healthy,
How many rice grains did you chew to make your mother smile?
That is to say,
God and grief are sometimes the same,
Omnipresent and Omnipotent
How you keep praying to God,
Slaves of grief, how you keep praying God,
for happiness.
On a happy Earth, grief is a sedative.
And the chemist says, “How many tablets for you?”
Your pocket is empty but we have a liking for “free” sample products.
You take two pills with a glass of wine,
You are feeling again.
How does it feel to feel pain?
Because pretending is pretending to have forgotten the wounds from defeat.
I ask you,
“What is defeat to you?”
You tell me how she kissed you,
And how you turned into her lips,
Now you are kissing your own palms,
Because defeat to you is your ‘unforgetting’,
You tell me,
“River banks that fall for water,
Find themselves in water and non-being.”
You must be afraid of love,
Because ‘unforgetting’ is a stubborn state of mind.
You fall asleep on my lap, sedatives work just fine.
Next morning, we are not strangers,
You wake up as if you never wanted to sleep,
You whisper,
“I am only afraid when I don’t know what I am afraid of”
You tell me,
“I think I am happy again.”
As your shadow, I can only wonder.
A Haunting Dream by Petula DSouza
a haunting dream
recurs:
unlike
a brave animal who can sniff prey or peril,
i'm foraging
in the blindness of the night, restless
my frozen bones have climbed out
defeating a thin sack of pink flesh
soft, damp,
a homecoming for maggots
who love a muted mess
depleted of magic potions;
without the deliverance of heaven
i'm a decorated wasteland -
then, trees are no longer trees
above me, but
spindly creatures without limit
waving goodbye.