From one woman to another

But everything is political, Baby
Even your love
Shine a light on it
Shift through the coarse grains of biases
How often do you compromise?
How often does he gets his way
Love is a battlefield
The most crucial one, Baby
If you win,
the rest would follow
Don't believe him when he says it is
silly to fight over it
He has the weight of the patriarchy by his side
It is easy for him to brush it aside
Because he has never had to fight like you, Baby
He doesn't know how it is like to be gagged from birth
He doesn't know how it is like to kick down doors
The world has been shaped by men for
the benifit of men, don't you forget it
He set the rules of family, state, religion
and expects you to take it,
by means of sweet talk or coercion
What will other people say?
has often been asked of you in the course of your life
Right from childhood by your parents
when you were forbidden to play with boys
To neighbourhood gossip when you didn't marry
all through your twenties.
Love is where it starts- the inequality, the cruelty
Don't let love blind you to what is yours
Don't let it make you accept
a vicious mother-in-law, a greedy father-in-law
When love asks too much from you, Baby
You raze it to the ground if you must
Light it on fire and watch it burn.

Ways to heal

To have spent the last months hating
makes it hard to love again
But you start slowly, take tiny steps
You fall in love with the way
sunlight filters through the windows
and makes shadows that shift
You fall in love with the green vines
hanging from your balcony
You watch them whole day,
Today you watched the fields drop by
in the car ride back home
You watched the setting sun,
children hurrying home with their mothers
You watch the world go by,
You would like a potted cactus in your room
and new books, new shelf, a rug
You glance at the news
and fresh wave of anger rises up your throat
You accept it will never really go away
And it is alright, you can live with that
Perhaps that makes you a better person
than those who aren't disconcerted
by the unfairness and the cruelty.
Sometimes you remember the friends
you once had, the ones you loved,
the ones you thought loved you.
Sometimes you weep for your wasted years.
Maybe they were necessary lessons.
Maybe love is a book that you fall asleep reading
And your heart the superpower you always wanted.

It is funny how you love them the most
when you have to let them go.

What good is your beating heart, old friend?

You have come again, my old friend,
announced by torrential tears
Because what good does it do?
What good does anything do anyway?
There are so many more important things to fight for
You have outgrown everyone you have known
In crowds, you feel terribly lonely
All those familiar faces no longer reach you
Yet you aren't willing to make new friends
Because what good does it do really?
You love them and they go away
Or they just turn out to be horrible people anyway
You have had too twisted a life
for them to love you
Your life intersected at the crossings of history and hellfire
You have seen good women fall
Evil men rise
Between home and strange lands,
Between last month and now,
you are filled to the brim with weariness
What good is your beating heart, old friend?

We will come with a flaming heart

My heart doesn't break anymore, it burns
It razes everything to the ground
The heart, I read somewhere, is an organ of fire.
Maybe that is why it was raining yesterday
Is raining again today
This world weeps for its loss.
Our grief divides us,
You took away what was rightfully ours,
our bountiful land, our deep dark trees
You steal our children in their sleep
You main, you rape, you kill
You try to civilise us, but we detest your
civilization, your loud mouths, your garish wealth
Your ignorance and your indifference,
We have our own tongue
we have no use for yours,
But you came with your guns and your flag
and imposed your history on us.
One day, we will come for you.
We will come with a flaming heart.

All the men I have loved

All the men I have loved 

have always told me not to be so angry

That I should laugh more often

And because I loved them and wanted to please them

I pretended to, but the rage never went away

Today I tell them I don’t want to calm down,

I don’t want to smile

This is a legitimate rage

And I rage for all the years we had to hide

We still do

All the years we had no claim over our own bodies

We still don’t

All the years we remained someone’s mother, 

or sister or wife or daughter

Never our own person

And all the history you took away from us

Confining our names to sidenotes, afterthoughts,

Villianising us, romanticizing us

But robbing us of our agency,

Our right to be angry

Our right to rage against everything that we have suffered

And still suffer

Today I don't want to be your darling daughter

I have no use for your love

If it doesn't let me decide

 The terms of my life

Today I don't want to be the love of your life

If you only loved me for my smile.

If this would ever end, then when

You are beginning to come to terms
With your tight fist of a heart
And that you will always be a little angry
at your own helplessness, at all the sand that
slips through your hands
At your ancestors for having been so foolish
To have got you into this mess,
There is no walking away without
blood in your hands
Something wasn't right from the start,
and you knew it
But when you screamed nobody listened
Because who listens to a woman
in this land unless you are old with a husband in tow
Nobody remembers the past,
except for distortions,
It is now Us and Them
Sometimes hate finds your way into your heart
And then the self-loathing afterwards
Sometimes you watch from your window
for the familiar sight of burning tyres
Boys in their teens running in glee
And the chemically induced tears afterwards
Last night in your dream
you were wandering in a mist
Wondering if this would ever end, then when?