By Aashreya Rajshekar
A shriek at midnight.
A young girl's ink box, now, filled with blood.
This is an ode to those girls.
Girls with small eyes, yet much sight.
Girls who are safe only under the shadow of their curiosity choked tight.
This is both a treatise and a prayer.
When the robed man said
"Let those who have ears, hear"
they made it a glittering aphorism.
Today, I say to you,
a congregation of oppression and cynicism,
Let those who have minds, learn.
Let those with thoughts, think.
Let the blissful pain of inquisition, within them burn,
before the cigarette.
Let them be, at once too small and yet irreversibly grand,
Let them know the name of the seas that threaten to consume them,
turn them from rock to sand.
Let them memorize both the solar system and systems that cage them.
Hide them.
Shame them.
Police them.
Let there be no bones in their body, they know not of, before their breaking.
Let them know the dangers of walking into a cave called knowledge.
Watch them walk in, anyway.
Let the unknown rattle them, let the known hold them.
Let them reek
of focal lengths and perseverance,
of sonnets and defiance,
of acids and triumphs,
of the microcosm that exists at the edge of an eyelash,
of a universe made out of 26 letters,
of knowing the metal in their father's whiplash.
Let their mind be their legislation,
love, their primary defense.
Let them be a small boat in the high tides of philosophy and sense-making.
Let them fall asleep to the lullabies of possibility.
Let them be the thing that learnt to break free.