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they taught her that hell existed at the curve of her waist. because the shape of her body left boys wanting. tempted them like apples hanging from trees. like fruit that wanted to be picked. made their minds wander. left too much to the imagination. too little to the imagination. he taught her that hell existed in the hourglass of her being in the small of her back in the movement of her legs when he invaded her because the sin was too tempting and she prayed for forgiveness.
i will not italicize all the parts of myself that make no sense to you.
i am a brown woman born on land stolen, sacrificed and then silenced.
when you are among men who call your voice the spark for every wildfire they’ve set you begin to soften your words without meaning to you call yourself water and try to douse flames that have nothing to do with you.
you tell me to take a seat here. on this pedestal that you have carefully constructed only to pull the wooden legs out from beneath my body when my mouth no longer forms the words of your choosing.
when did you forget that the walls of a woman’s body were once a fortress protecting you from a world you were too fragile for?
does water remember when she is stilled into silence all the ways that she can strangle and devour?
i’ve tried boarding up the windows with deep breathing and changing all the locks on my thoughts but when anxiety moves into my body i am pushed out onto the street with nothing but a box of crushed courage and a few flimsy distractions to hold me over until she decides it is time to leave.
in the end, it is not the smoke that we all suffocate on but the silence smoke can consume a pair of lungs but silence consumes generations and as the smoke lifts upon punjab and the flames subside it is the silence that remains and i know no death more frightening.
she asks when do things start getting better? and i tell her that they don’t until better is demanded.
is there a way to forgive you without watching myself vanish?
how often were we tuned to entirely different frequencies while we claimed to hear each other’s words?
i will remind him that a woman’s body is not a storage house for his insecurities nor her mind a cheap canvas where his oil-paint words can prepare a draft for the next mural
