Wrists & Impostor Identities

By Bhavya Mehta

My wrists have always been a little too thin,

the two moles and a protruding bone made me think,

“Mine are different than others!”

A classmate once said, 'Your wrist is so thin, I like holding it,"

it made me blush,

I liked being different.

I started wearing round steel Kada,

I borrowed a faith because,

that's all I could afford as a girl of ambiguous religious sentiments.

The sound that the steel made when I wrote in my notebooks,

turned a few heads.

The attention was uncalled,

but was it unwanted? I don't know.

My wrist looked pretty with it though.

I liked being different.

“I am not like other girls,”

I would tell myself every day when I was turning 13.

The idea of not being unique haunted me,

so I wore a silver watch on my right wrist,

it made me feel like a young boy.

The cost of being different meant embracing the things I hated;

masculinity and watches.

But I liked being different.

"Can you stop wearing hair ties on your wrist!,'

my sister once told me,

she said it looks ugly and no one wears it like that.

I exploited the opportunity,

started wearing it everyday,

partly because I was finally embracing my femininity,

partly because I didn't want to wear watches anymore.

It's a paradox, you see-

unique identities are built over currencies of pretentiousness

but then,

What are you if not different?

By Bhavya Mehta