by Nirjha Duttha

I am a girl! A light wrapped in a mortal flame.
Cross armed the bosom,
I stand on the melodic minor
of a morning raga.

Like a butterfly,
I fly to the mountain top to kiss goodbye
to travelling clouds.
I am wind, that raid the morbid leaves
and scatter the pulsating flock of birds.

The fecundus bough that I bear,
nurtures the sapling of motherhood and
routes the hidden feminine out of my body
Ushering the insipid.

Like a sweet southerly breeze, you came
And filled me with zeal of life.
I nurtured you inside my body, like a gardener nurtures a tulip.
Enduring the agonising dols,
I shepherded you to this world.
Smileys of your milky face dragged my pathos to a distant land.

I am a daughter, mother and sister,
Why always I have to be in agony?
You don’t want a girl; I am doom to the family.
You make humongous profit
Turning tenderness into the butcher’s meat.
Like filth of the gutter, you discard me
And throw me to the underworld
To claim my body and soul.

Nein, I claim the assertiveness of my body and soul.
I call upon thee,
to return my vanity and my innocence, at all.
Being submissive to you,
I was tender as a rose, kindred as the twilight red.
The pernicious you will be expunged
As a rogue wave wrecks a ship into mere debris of logs.
Humanity cannot be bereft of its dominion
Because I am a woman, the very nature of humanity.

Editor’s Note on Ricocheting Candyfloss:

Ricocheting Candyfloss is not Nirjha Duttha’s first work to appear in Eastlit. His previous published pieces are:

• The Boat and the Old Mariner appeared in Eastlit October 2015.