A Woman Learns 

A woman learns when she is young

That all of her is a weapon

Against a world that is determined

To mould her softness into something

Convenient, hard, eventually,

a disappearance.

She learns of her red lips –

The red, which knows the taste of her tongue,

The tongue she has to wield, like an Urumi, because to survive,

She has to be heard.

She learns of the steel in her spine,

The day when she walks past one man, two,

One hand, two,

One kiss, two,

One slap, two.

How she stands straighter, the steel

Made stronger in fire.

She learns of her life-giving,

Supple breasts, tight vagina,

Every month, the needless pain of blood,

Blood that turns to milk,

Milk that turns to blood.

A woman learns when she is young

That all of her is a weapon

Against a world that is determined

To mould her softness into something

Convenient, hard, eventually,

A disappearance –

Appears.

Arathi Devandran curates personal experiences, snapshots of the world and the stories people are willing to share with her through prose and poetry www.miffalicious.com