By Myra Gupta
INTRO: THE BEGINNING (point of view: shielded)
Both are mind and flesh
devoted to silent shouting,
broken promises and misplaced faith.
Now, they roam around in chains and shackles.
They have close relations
if forced smiles and tense houses define closeness.
Love was forgotten
in the pretence of togetherness.
They stab each other with hushed words
I draw conclusions with every stab—
money is a big deal in arranged marriages (stab!)
No, money is a big deal in failed marriages.
Their lonely hearts remain preserved and void
in separate rooms, the desire to separate grows
as love renounces them
the house reeks of stab-less, deafening silence.
Neither knows where to place blame
but they do nonetheless,
they stay nonetheless.
After all, these chains have lasted twenty years.
PRE-INTERLUDE: THE REALISATION (point of view: enlightened)
The truth jolts reality through my dream, my slumber:
Money is the least of her concerns
The man’s ‘manly needs’, his gut-wrenching words,
the dominance that replaces the blood in his veins,
his audacity to use and discard,
strike at the thinning thread of her shredding resilience with an axe.
I saw when the blindfold was off, the shield lifted,
not even Achilles could fight what she did.
Love didn’t exist from the first of it.
It wasn’t the marriage that she broke,
It was the claim to her body.
INTERLUDE:
Her hand in mine,
I watch the attempt to end twenty years of slavery.
The daughter in me
ashamed of one, empowered by the other
watches the man I now refuse to call ‘father’
refute her irrefutable logic with yet again, dominance.
POST-INTERVAL: THE RIOTS
But if the twenty years rained injustice,
she laughed in time’s face with the just of them all—
A free bird doesn’t need a husband.
I watch us leave him,
Left alone in the company of dominance.
My mother’s hand still in mine,
we attempt our rebuild.
Collapse though it may, the foundation we lay of:
love is stronger than ever.
CLIMAX (spoiler alert: we survive):
We fight the dawns of doubt,
and the dusks of uncertainty
with support, with sleep, with withdrawal;
just like she fought the misogyny thrown her way by
ramming his axe in his heart—
the source to his dominance.
I would like to thank the man who is my father,
for what didn’t kill us, certainly killed naivety.
The world exists to break the bravest of us
but his crocodile tears failed to break through.
The man can buy a million new axes,
no hit shall be strong enough to shatter
the remnants of the greatest tragedy that befell our lives.