you can’t drown me in your gendered verbiage
remember, it’ll be flung at you in fiery lumps:
it’ll drown the pillar-like rock, (you seem to be) boomeranging whatever you’ve said,
like lava after a volcano’s eruption!
***
you can’t dunk me in tame clothes
they cover me, not your eyes that spy!
your gaze- blazes my bones sunk under tamed layers! ouch your gaze, it destroys…
like lava after a volcano’s eruption!
***
my broken heart, is tied in knots of rituals
I yearn to skip when tied in flaring menstrual skirts;
with the bridal knot, my passion and identity flail and die
and then you thrust the white garb! as if you’re asking the volcanic lava to vent…
***
you forget, beneath this social mantle my being smolders
womanhood like warm magma simmers
you forget, the warmth of womanhood enlivens the earth!
yet each time you scar me, like the vented lava, I burn.
***
nothing, not widow’s weeds, neither perfidy, nor blasphemy!
nothing can stifle the warmth, that lights up
your passion,
And continues to sparkle in your child’s eyes,
ah I celebrate! can’t you hear me sing? …like lava, I become farmers’ silt!
*****
Mumtaz N Khorakiwala
26-12-2021
Picture courtesy : Tom Watkins
picture courtesy: Manyu Varma
