You Are Strong Because You Are A woman

By Swaathy Ravichandran

“Smile and look pretty” stripped me of my brain,

Reducing me to the meat of a body on display,

He reminds me I was made to devour, another variety of pork,

And I would be slaughtered,

When I bleed, dream, age, speak, live, breathe;

He chains me at dark so I couldn't escape fate,

‘A swine’ ridiculed in front of his kind,

‘Abuse is better than living alone!’ Shame;

Plastered to my forehead but never his,

Riots against his wife, sister, mother and daughter,

that's never his fault- misogyny, rape, abuse, murder.

The world has always been this way- Monsters,

who demand forgiveness and take the law by force,

“ Accept the curse of the weaker sex,” says collective he, but always taken care of as his birthright.

When She, who hopes to never pull a short stick,

to be a victim of today's horror quota,

Keys braced as a weapon, she checks again,

and hopes any man she comes across is not a rapist,

A monster who would bury, burn, rape or touches her,

She boldly says “No” to the confession,

Hoping he would not scathe her with domestic acid,

She walks under flickering light, increasing her pace,

Praying she could slip his vision- a woman at an untimely hour, with no one around to care,

Without her father, brother or husband,

She may be his next victim,

Again boiled down into the weight of her meat,

She races for life with a vile of pepper,

Recognizing he is only her stalker,

with the mask of a divine lover,

“ Let me live another day” she pleads with the lord,

To only reach her home to start again,

the nightmare of unsafe streets, cars, and crowded places,

She works and earns yet is only compensated with an allowance under minimum wage- at work and home,

She, who is strong,

cares, works, eats, breathes, falls, survives;

Still, she heals, rises, dreams, achieves,

lives and loves,

and changes the world for the better for

All the daughters of the earth,

Because she collectively,

is innately and always strong because she is a woman.

By Swaathy Ravichandran