A Wave of Talking air.

TRIGGER WARNING - RAPE

I have never felt lighter.

I'm a stack of washed dresses.
My insides meant to be wrung out,
As you clean me of my impurities.
And my outside meant to be crumpled,
If I sway more than you would like me.
My skin meant be worshiped,
And turned into a waste cloth,
When I'm no longer wearable by you.
But,
I'm meant to scrub your dirt off the face of humanity.

I am just a bendable mannequin,
With all parts in place.
A soft squeezable bar of soap,
Scared I might crumble,
When you step on me.
When you rub me harshly
Against your cold, bloodless skin,
Just to watch me disappear.
"It's magic, isn't it?"


My heart has never felt stiller.
Sometimes, I can still hear it throbbing,
Pleading me to hold it tight
Still scared of falling out
Of the cage that is my body.
Whose door you knocked down,
Without even trying to knock first.

I can still feel it trying,
To make my brain work again.
To make my legs kick harder,
To make my tongue shiver,
So I could scream a little louder,
To make my teeth bite deeper
Or to at least make it stop hurting,
To stop feeling the pain,
Even after being hit so hard
That I could barely feel my flesh
Still wrapped around my bones.

I am a discarded coke can,
My last drop couldn’t reach your tongue,
And I can only hope you don’t open another one.

~I am on the roadside.
My face covered in dust that should have been thrown on yours.
My nerves, still.
And my eyes, fixed.
On that tiny speck of light,
Driving away, getting smaller on the isolated road
That seems way too far away from home~

"What is the rope like thing near that slut?"
"There are other things that need to be dealt with first,
Like getting rid of all her impure blood.
Just throw the damn thing off the bus!"

~ And that is when we lost all hope,
"Her intestines have been severely hurt,
One of the rapists mistook it for a rope.
A bloody wheel jack handle has been found and
That is what they must have used to pull her out." ~

I have never felt lighter.
It's like I'm not human anymore.
I'm a pile of stones, a heap of earth,
Meant to disappear after losing everything first,
In the struggle to live in this inhuman world,
as a human girl.

I've been emptied out.
And then, reborn.
I'm a wave of air, talking to innumerable others,
Who have just been born.

I'm life,
Meant to be taken.
And I will be.
So they won't have to condense into,
Little droplets of impure blood.
Or get collected,
Only to be spilled and thrown and burned,
And then be called a burden,
When they need to be cleaned up.

I'm death,
Meant to last.
So they won't have to evaporate into 
Another wave of talking air,
Afraid of watching another get hurt.

-  Jyoti Singh, “Nirbhaya”, an Indian girl who was raped on a moving bus by six men in 2012.