The poem outlines an estranged experience of a girl with a situation of molestation and rape. The poem defines how the next morning following the night of the spineless attack would have felt and what thoughts would hover over the person.
Not all seemed well that morning,
I was on a swing, sitting still
Starring with hollow eyes
Without a blink to fill in the blank
In zone of darkness and blackness
Whether it was a question or
An array of scattered thoughts
I still couldn’t battle throughout
The pain was heavy this time,
It was not the mouth but the vaginal gap
That shouted for help, that shouted for love
That shouted for concern, that shouted for any voice, if any
The morning seemed one with sun rising to its maximise power,
And clouds with sudden seek
Winning the hide-seek game
Leaving every thing with greys anatomy
Or maybe a little more than it
It was me or the air becoming windy,
I failed to decide,
Did I lose with the play or heroically made a score,
I failed again, against the decision making power,
Though, it kept saying that
Strength needs care,
Identity needs definition,
What that night had brought
Wasn’t a gift card from a shopping store
But a lifetime membership of
Something you never wanted
But salesmanship had it’s manner
The magic worked and you were trapped
That morning brought me to
a broken down home
To a stray house with torn apart clothes,
And scratches stretched across the body,
Fulfilling someone’s wandering lust
And attempts to ‘fix me’ to the tag of coolness
As they laughed it out over drinks to pleasure
It wasn’t a morning of sorts that’s expected often,
Bit when we hear, tears roll down,
And we are left with nothing to offer,
Barriers become more stringent
Strings to mental breakdown becomes prominent
And a promise to half burnt cigarettes
Are only ones made regularly to
Schedule a relationship between the
I and you a little more comfortable
But, you know,
How they say, promises are always meant to be broken,
What do you think happened to those?
-Jigyasa Tandon
About the author: Ms. Jigyasa Tandon is a Mental Health Educationist, NIMHANS, Bangalore and Counselling Psychologist. She is the founder of PSY-Fi : For A Healthy Mind, which aims at looking after mental health needs of the country.