By Aditi Surha
In a pool of her own blood,
ashamed and afraid,
she runs—
not from pain,
but from the shame poured into her
long before she learned the word for it.
The bathroom becomes her hiding place.
She scrubs herself clean with a separate hose,
always careful—
not to let her impurity
touch the walls, the floor, the tiles
the world that won’t have her this way.
Even in pain,
she rinses the blanket her blood soaked,
washes the clothes that betrayed her.
There is no room for rest—
only ritual.
“Maa... I’m on my period.”
“Oh, child, then stay outside.
Don’t come in.
Don’t pollute our space with what you are.
Suppress yourself—
because that’s what we are taught.
Adjust—
because this is a play of patriarchy
and we must follow the script to limit what we are”
And just like that,
a wall is drawn.
No kitchen. No prayer. No touch.
A separate blanket, a separate bed.
No step inside the kitchen.
No hand to the holy.
No entry where men breathe.
“Don’t let others catch your germs.
You mustn't touch anything.
Make yourself small.
Silence your voice.”
She’s twelve and she learns to disappear
for five days every month.
made to believe
that what she feels is custom,
that her stillness is culture,
that she must obey
without a question
And decades later,
when she grows older,
the curse will continue
patterns will uphold
she’ll hold her daughter’s hand
as blood runs down young legs,
and without thinking,
she will murmur the same words her mother did.
The same shame.
The same exile.
And the cycle will repeat—
only the names will change
Her mother wore silence like a second skin
and now, she teaches her daughter how to wear it too—
as if shame were a family heirloom.
But,
give her space to bleed without exile
for she carries the crimson hymn
of generations in her womb
Let her bleed—
not as punishment,
but as proof, as pride
that life sings through her veins.
Let her bleed—
because she is not unclean.
Let her bleed—
still pray,
still touch,
still enter.
Let her bleed—
and let the world adjust.
A quiet revolution
in the language of blood.
And then maybe one day,
she will not whisper it.
Maybe one day,
she’ll say "I bleed"
like one says “I breathe”—
without apology
Well written❤️