My first name is irrelevant and my last name is dangerous

1.
(Tw: casteist slurs, body shaming)

My first name is irrelevant and my last name is dangerous, they say. The only woman ought to be known is the one that took birth with my middle name. Our names are political. So is our language, so is my god and so are my women. Our country suffocates with greedy businessmen and our houses fill with mourning mothers. A mother’s wrath is a death sentence even gods forbid. A woman’s freedom has costs to pay whether it is borders, fathers, husbands or bra straps. We are called names. Kazhuveri. Pulayadi. And names are political. I am called almost a woman for bearing a healthy uterus. I am called a man for bearing no curves on my body. I am called illegitimate when Abbu smells of vodka. We are called names and names are political. I’ll tell you all the truths but I have perfected an art of saying everything and nothing. Once it leaves my blood filled mouth, let it pester your listening, bleed your ears. Our rivers and seas are red today.

2.
There was food on the table
when one of us bore violent trophies.
We were bribed by the sins of a con man
A figure disguised as a temperamental father
In return for sixty sovereign gold
I blame the gods for inheriting her hunger to love.

The Urdu words harm and haram are one letter afar
to be sinned and to be a shelter
I was born from you, mother
Tell me am I a sin or am I a home?

Grief piled into mountains waiting to erupt
All the smoke carefully settled on my lungs
Memories and hairlines fade as lovers dissipate
I have shed all the skin that remembered half my name.

Silenced mothers are mourners of birth
of their own daughters, daughters that would become
coroners to their bony bodies. I apologise,
these words are churning stones in my stomach
Our bodies never fail to grieve even in refusal
So I vomit miserable poems to repent.

the walls had blood running through its veins, but when I hit them with my bare hands, it owed vodka. rest of the time

it carried the zamzam, mother kept in a clean bottle on the third cupboard from the left.

the car took a right turn, there were three hands gripping the steering wheel, the other of a man unrelated, disappeared under my skirt.

a few years later i became a woman, “umma i have blood in my underwear”, i said it out loud for mother to hear

The next morning, I was adorned with gold, half-boiled eggs and a glass of Boost in return for my womanhood. I wanted to scream. I WAS A CHILD. I WAS A CHILD.

I watched my house burn. i needed rivers to put out the fire
my tears remained shameful, refusing to pour out in demand. all that blood holding together the concrete walls of my home was untouched anger passed on from father.

my rage isn't red anymore, it is Sherwin Williams Tricorn Black but first daughters don't speak ill of their fathers
Instead, they speak of the shades of blue black and violet on their bodies.