Poetry for Sexual Awareness Month
By Srijani Rupsha Mitra
Self Portrait as Forest Fire
burning grasses, burning trees,
fire
surging to form smoke, the shape of leaves,
meshwork, seeds, hiding somewhere behind the hills,
I turn to the trees, their truncated bodies like ghosts of women
in ashen amber sheaths.
smoldering branches, old and shattered,
skins like coal.
there’s a fiery breeze,
the sky bathed in
the colour of clotted blood bath
of survivors and
their sturdy, resilient parchments
entwined in a mesh
of ashes—sable in green.
my soul in solitude
peeled off like the sepia skeins
in unmoving forlorn senses of the forests,
bared open as a decaying defeat.
I try to count the missing girls,
but there’s no count at all.
the fire in me blazes in lone,
the ladies inside the palkis and sheaths
have now grown
turning to sleek nothings in coffins of briar.
it only evokes my heated ire.
and nothing remains of the forest, nothing left of the emerald veins
the thickness of solitude, surrounds as
dusted yarn.
thick as the
pollution of within and beyond.
the once-red sarees of a bride,
lie torn.
how I wish to burn in refusal
to have my breath cut into half,
oh how I want to consume the flames flamboyant, tarnishing the old, gruesome sacrifices of those who never told
the secrets of violence that slowly unfold.
let’s think of larynxes swelling with utmost power
in ways of resurrection—
regenerative and bold.
Song for Ourselves
it’s amusing, how we have learned the art of hiding
behind veils, foliages of unknown security, under the sheaths of over-protective fathers who whisper of distrust and abuse.
that even happened to me. even to this day after coming of age. beaten in gruesome hauntings. I ask you.
have you heard the constant murmur of getting back early to home? before the nestward-bound birds arrive for resting,
before the sinister spirits would upturn our welkin and engulf us in their dark webs and vicious cycles, all those miscreants stay at our homes.
we are burdening, tiring, burning still, like an ordeal of fire, just trying to prove our purity, decency.
how we are taught to be ingenuous but are fortunate if we know our own startling power, fighting the world with fierce ire.
yes, it is sometimes tiring to be a woman.
our missing girls, the nights of striding out in might from the sable woods, the bloody offerings of our mothers,
isn’t it time to divulge our stories and utter our names in our own startling power, isn’t it time to listen to our voices,
and isn’t it time to scream out loud. not the hush of woods, nor its swishing silence.
but to turn really wild and bright, with tigers breathing in between our thighs.
Portrait With Blood
It begins as a force in the arteries, maybe an animal pressing against the chest
warm weather as it makes me nervous in the veins.
The dilution, the illusion seems cool to touch and feel
the epidermis, when scarred and trauma breathes
at night.
The terror in my bones
when seeing images—nothing less than uncanny hauntings.
It spills over and over.
I try to imagine it as the detonation of poppy in the backyard of this earth—
the garden of life where we grow as buds, droplets,
throughout, paining and hungering, we bloom as
young girls learning their bodies and souls.
Encumbered with stories untold.
We endure and sustain and thrive and
learn about freedom and how it is given only after blood spills ruddy as cherry blossoms unveil, unfold.
Yet, as today I say out loud all the bottled up morose to my perpetrator with the strength of battling times, I ponder
why not think of blood,
as layers in unmoving silences
into the blossoming of love,
scratching the hues—rama green, purple, reddish blue,
as pomegranate gems and crystals squeezed all over,
dropping and dripping, like petals of amaryllis love, lying
deep within, deep as the sanctimonious truth.
Meet the contributor:
Srijani Rupsha Mitra is a writer based in India. She is preparing for Indian entrance exams and also publishing regular articles with a beauty blog. Her poetry is mostly based on psychology, trauma and culture. Her recent publications are a zine on psychology and essays in magazines like ItGetsBetter and Barriers to Bridges.
