There are many ways to kill infant girls, sometimes simply by refusing to hold them.
I developed allergies after my father died. Took me four years
to realize that
like a poisoned imprint, what remains of him is this, not
the embrace.
How in India, parents are not told the gender of their baby to eradicate female
infanticide, yet many are still abandoned in government cradles.
Once abandoned,
how do we unbroken ourselves into love?
My heart is a trap of
elaborate cravings,
enticing enough to draw in bugs,
yet insubstantial to be chosen,
a cadence of brokenness, its castoffs lying
on the floor like a collection of ebbing memories.
The erased faces from gender selection reveal parents who reject their girls, fathers who drown them, mothers who suffocate them, and entire families remain silent – a wrenching sorrow for abusive enduring traditions. The loud anguish of these girls silenced, as our coarse words fade into invisibility. The mother daughtering —a
whimsical denial of life.
women
mustn’t yell. If we love, let it be softly,
or else it’s too good to be true. If we grow older,
grow knowing love ends, because you might die before him.
If you make love, do it disinterested,
for if you find enjoyment, it ́s only to numb yourself – gods do not forgive a woman
who knows pleasure.
The abandoned babies are usually females. This aging unborn body—what makes it
unfit for lasting love? I, who loved a father, knowing I would end up alone, not even
dogs wanting to piss on my legs?
I start with the title,
driven by a greedy anger I ́ve learned to be ashamed of, but the truth is
I am enlarging grief, occupying
space like unending fields of mourning.
And moving slowly within the day,
a debris of gravitas – my personality the culprit,
unheld as if you wanted to kill a female baby in a cradle not of a mother’s making.
What is it about us, broken women, not made for long term?
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