Mildly Offensive Content

A warm sky and rusty swings in the park.

I like to sit on the swings in early evening hours

Else, I am bullied into a corner by the stronger kids.

I’ve even got a chocolate to keep me company

As the swing talks to me, excitedly:

Scree-scronk, scree-scronk

Scree-scronk, scree-sconk.

You watch me from the bench and smile.

I see you have another chocolate and that’s a magnet, right there.

The shiny wrapper, your encouraging smile and then,

Your hand against my thigh, climbing up.

I begin to cry and your penis alerts itself to just, that.

My muffled screams, my bloody torn vagina and your hands

Your hands on my adolescent breasts.

These images, will stay.

Too young to remember.

My mother never lets me out of her sight.

And I have a natural aversion to brown beards

To pot bellies of old men, that make me nauseous.

Is it because of you? I’m never allowed to talk to you.

Did you strip me naked and eject your lust on my infantile body?

And now, your own daughter sits astride your lap, with TRUST.

I liked a boy and movies about perfect snogging.

I also loved sparkly nail paint and vibrant dresses

That made the boys in class smile at me.

Then you offered to take me to our tuition center.

And my teenaged mind was ecstatic

“Teacher will drop me. Mouths will jabber. Yay!”

The people talked, but not in envy. In pity.

And I, grew obese in the confines of my room.

Remembering the bougainvillea creepers that pricked my face.

As you tore threw me, with your erectile monster.

I now eat away, the memories of after.

Of dropping out, of baggy clothes and losing my body

To the love of carbs that don’t and won’t rape my solitude.

Trust and its emissions on a young working woman.

I’m me, I’m her and I’m nobody.

I’m the girl you see on the metro and forget.

I’m the girl haggling with auto drivers that you glimpsed from your car.

I’m the girl who loves discounts in the city malls.

I’m the girl who lived next door to you and borrowed coffee.

So you knew, I smoke, I stay up late. Alone.

I’m the girl you came to, pretending to be hurt, asking for a bandage.

I’m the girl who took you in, out of humanity, without my pepper spray.

I’m now the girl you raped, tying up my wrists with that camping rope you bragged about.

I’m the girl into whose mouth you shoved, the carabiner, for silence.

I can never climb a rock or go on a trek. Again.

The old lady buying vegetables in the colony.

You would touch my feet, and offer to carry my bags.

I thought it was respect, it was sympathy for my asthma ridden body.

I should conform to my type— old, widowed and wise from age.

I did just that, and treated you as a son.

You came to fix the leaking kitchen pipe.

Instead, you took my trembling body and ravaged it.

You reaped a long lost harvest and walked away, laughing.

It was only a challenge from mindless friends, to you.

All of these are stories, one and many.

All of these are voices, silent and vocal.

All of these are orphans of society— the absent parent.

All of these women, are and could be— you and me.