It is not just a social evil; it is a crime against humanity."
Gandhi
one woman
unknown to her family
tried to sever it off when
I was just a passing cloud
and she was twenty.
a revolutionary with
his moustache running
into ash dark sunburns
tried it two years ago
and now we don’t
know how to tell these
colours apart. you see
we hold history in portraits
like a confession
the deity closed her ears
on - an adolescent choice
in a pilfered ear, the inheritance
in his scored spine
the woman he loved
screaming from his gaped
mouth.
when we held the scythes
halfway into our tongues
we called out for our ancestors
not knowing the whole time
the gallows were in
our umbilicus
barely undone. the kid sunk
into his sister asks how long
does it take for years
to become epitaphs and
the only sane octogenarian
teeth unhinged
will once again ask
for the wisdom to define life
in its absence. when we were
preached to search for God
outside the temples
our thirsts were quenched in
waters that swallowed us whole
only from the outside.
how we wear our bloodlines
like unwinged termites
waiting to
die in the morning?
knowing by then
even the spirits
thrashed into our limed
walls have become
Godless. the blood dried up in
another man’s caved skull
the blood that pencils down
my mother’s slit wrists
and the blood I pour
instead of rain
all had one name.