“Your body was like an almond
Soft, smooth and so soothing
For a nocturnal jaunt
Any animal can ruin
You subtly fast capturing,
Mooring you to his bed post…”
He was her fiftieth customer,
Whose horrible bed manners
Replaying in her head,
Tugged at her nauseous chest.
“Conscience” rolling, mangled fell
For the zillionth time.
Disgust pervaded in
Seeping through her veins,
“Phew! This body of a whore
Costs an arm and leg to hold!
My life, my children, this brothel
Have turned me dire cold.
Yet some bastardly men provoke
Vigorously disturbing shots;
Mimicking prolonged torture,
Prancing over like tigers would
Spotting a meek deer.
In this luscious mead,
Despite being around
Many men young and old
And other women alike me
I have often felt alone the most.
So, I speak to myself
In rambling monologues.
My head accepts me because
It is fixed to this shapely body
As long as I would hold
The screws upright, it shall
Persist, this poor soul.
Though it yearns for real love,
From an honest man sole
Who would not look down
On my sluttish persona
But embrace my body.
“My husband, I am his wife, legally wed!”
I would be free and happy, ah dreams!
Such dreams in the daylight
Keep me a little happy,
For it takes me away
From this tattered mosaic
Flooded with obnoxious noises!
In and out of my body and a herd
Of other heavy bodies that picked me,
Drewing me into hypnotic loops,
Weathering tragedy after tragedy,
Deep into the pores of my body;
“A blatant, downright, disgraceful shame!”
A body that I feel hardly knows
What all it ought to and feels
Lesser than higher women usually do.
“Ain’t I a woman?” I still doubt
Seeing others who savagely pout
Their stained red-tinted lips,
Rubbing against their men’s beards,
And hastily withdraw, seeing kids
Running around the house.
“No, for them always a “home”
Some say, “I belong to the streets!”
And some say, “I belong to nobody.
Not even to myself!”
“Self is something”, they say;
“A clear oblivion in my case;
Inhumanely possible to locate
Or recollect for that matter.”
“They” who call me names
Have no good brains!
How strange they have multiple degrees
Suffixed to their names.
How they are so blind and dumb!
“Yes, I was born here and I have a name too,
And I believe that someday
My body would call
Me by my name and embrace
Me for what it wrought itself upon
At least before I would breathe my last…”
As she stared harder at the blurred mirror,
Weirdly, she sensed her shoulders falling
Off her trunk, shrugging
Yelping, bawling, she tossed cookies
Into the rotting wash basin,
Struggling to forget
Egregious chunks of memory
And she vanished into wilderness.
Perhaps it was another beast,
Waiting at her threshold,
Desperate to hunt her down.
I shut the windows and speak to myself
Running my hands down my shoulder,
Grazing my nails over my body;
Touching and feeling
Its unholy vulnerability.
“Our bodies,” I feel
Are just as frail and green;
Womanly, naturally
As plants unknown to me.
So many are standing in the field,
Endlessly stared at by many
Passing eyes and feet.
We stand before men,
To the flashing wind
Their blades flutter,
To our mercurial desires
We feminine waver.
Wavering, wavering, sink
Our feet dunk
In the dirty mud.
Clay: the game of God.
We retrospect over sins
Which barely we did commit.
“Temptations! Holy shit!”
Wind, water, sun
Animals, the hands of a man
Manhandling us
Butchering, tearing, undressing
Us sheath by sheath.
Layer by layer subtly,
Their sadistic appetites
Covers that slipping peal
Forever defeated.
We shriek and moan
Surrendering our holy cloak
At their commanding feet
“Men like petite women!”
“Women cannot be with other women!”
If they like, they cannot tie
Their knots like men can.
They cannot bear children,
Even if they wish not to,
Other older men and women,
And other younger men and women
Forbid them from uniting.
Protest, protest, they wildly protest!
Severing two hands that loved
To touch each other and make love
On a full moon night;
Abed, cautious of each other’s bodily plight,
Gently fondling, whispering, kissing
Good night.
Yet womanly bodies only entangle
With predestined manly bodies.
Despite the hetero-disgust,
The hormonal ickiness lasts,
Regurgitations follow,
The flow pauses;
Ten months with burden
Lining the fatty abdomen.
“Womb”, “embryo”, “foetus”, “infant”,
Several names to different stages.
For them a child is always,
Ideally, should remain, the begetting goal.
Heir, hierarchy, rule!
To trample over other women next.
Family is nothing normal
Without “them” or “him”.
Queerness is all they smirk at,
Dismiss, condemn, castigate!
Spit at digging their fingers
Deep into their desecrated ears.
And so, our women married,
Lose, losing, lost
From touching and feeling
Everything womanly but men.
They bow and hold
To their heart they walk
Behind and even crawl!
If men go behind other
Voluptuous figures
For temporal joys.
And so, our women married,
Lose, losing, lost
From touching and feeling
Everything womanly but men.
They bow and hold
To their heart they walk
Behind and even crawl!
If men go behind other
Voluptuous figures
For temporal joys.
But women cannot but cook,
Clean, serve, kneel
Despite the hoard of money
And the ancestral property
They save in their names
Come to nothing.
Women like this repeat,
Circumambulate,
Seven times!
Get their necks tied
“With the yellow noose!”
My mother said,
Recalling how hers was
“A tactical business deal!”
Selling her away to my father,
Was too easy for her father.
And here we as women,
Young and peppy,
Uninterested in wedding any
Man or woman,
We look up to grab
Golden balls from heaven.
Flames that we deserved
To caress and love
Us better than fore,
Forlorn.
Yet, we descend to the very depths
Which our mothers fell to.
Our skin, every inch
Does, un-does, re-does itself;
Petals and sepals
Peel away with age.
Time takes us both
To the common grave.
Rubbed by many;
Young or old,
Agreeable or disagreeable,
Married or unmarried,
Tainted by touches
From head to toe.
An unidentifiable rush;
A paraphernalia of emotions.
Nobody yet honestly talks!
Not even our own women,
To you or to me,
To talk our hearts out.
About those moments,
Where we encountered
Gazes and blemishes
Over our bloody bark
Stemming, rooted
Despoiled
Twigs
Split.
About the Author …
Naganandhini N.R, a passionate literature student, is a poet since her late teenage years. She hails from a town in Tamil Nadu recognized by the epithet ” Niagara of India”. Her pen, the penchant wand she calls, is a witness to more than thousand literary pieces. A varied range of quotes, poems and fragmentary anecdotes embody her literary spectrum. In addition, recently she has produced a humorous series of thirteen stories written in the manner of episodes encompassing her campus life at EFLU, Hyderabad. Her poems endorse people, places and events that either affect or attract her in an uncommonly striking manner.
Link to her personal blog on WordPress:
Your writing is an immersive time machine my friend, taking one to lands past, future and unknown.
It will take a couple more readings to fully perceive the depth of the POV depicted here.
Looking forward to it 🙂
Thankyou Kaavya, I am so overwhelmed 🥺❤