Am I Like You?
My mother says,
[inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””]I am like you.[/inlinetweet]
See,
my eyes and yours placed together,
in this world,
but only as a picture,
for my eyes can never be yours,
and yours never mine.
not in this world of ours,
where I will be shunned,
where my presence will arouse disgust forty-eight days in a year,
and your image,
your idol,
will be worshipped 365 days a year.
Am I really like you?
You are aesthetic in your form,
you are loved by devotees the world over,
I am different,
the difference lies in those forty-eight days.
You are kept in the prayer room throughout,
but I,
I am not allowed to enter your domain.
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I bleed,
bleed tears and blood alike when I am raped,
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or thrown on the streets but you are not besmirched.
No you and I are not the same.
Yet,
My mother, she says I am just like you.
Determined,
and, strong,
and,[inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””]
within me
lies an inexorable force.
[/inlinetweet]
yet, I am stopped,
by the worshippers,
the lovers,
the rapists,
and the degraders.
If by that you meant,
I keep on walking,
I do,
but not like before.
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Modified,
in ways you are not,
sullied,
in ways you cannot be,
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besmirched,
in ways you can never be.
No, I say,
again, I am not like you.
My Ma, she tells me,
she had prayed to you incessantly,
to put me into her womb,
and, you did, she says.
I think to myself, how convenient,
that you could never fathom what I would go through,
How could you fathom so?
You thought there was no difference,
you always knew it was meant to be an elevated forty-eight days,
and,
that [inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””]
the power to cultivate life
lay in your hands and mine by those special, sacred
forty-eight days.
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Poet – Bhavya Sinha
An economics student at Delhi University, Bhavya has but catholic interests ranging from writing, karate, art to binge watching endless movies and TV shows. Writing helps her vent out things bottled up inside.
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