UNSOLICITED:
A capsule that holds poetic expression of trauma that unwelcome touch evokes in womxn all across the globe. The experience is shared and individual simultaneously and resonates with all womxn I know.
My body remembers touch
long forgotten by my brain
Unlike other details of an average domestic life
Lost to the passage of time,
Quietly.
I crave to lose them to oblivion
Retain them nonetheless
In reflex and response,
I do not know for sure.
In trains, a peeping pair of feet were felt up while I slept
Waking me up, startled, screaming in bouts;
A hand going up my skirt in a crowded metro
Another one below my buttocks,
just as I sat down on a bus seat.
One hand brutally pressed my breasts,
emerging out of nowhere
While I stood, waiting for a friend at a fair
My lips remember being pinched till they bled,
Holi has been traumatic ever since.
Scars of physical distress came off,
I shed them like a snake,
Bore skin that held no stories
But the covert touch lingers
Like an unwelcome intruder
I now inhabit a new space
Call it mine,
With locked doors and bolted windows
Wake up screaming
As a curtain brushes against my skin, nonetheless.
(Text, images and creatives belong to the author and no part may be reproduced without due permission.)
