By Manya Singh
It never happened in one day
it took my whole girlhood to understand
when I realised and felt for you—
you had developed tender breasts,
and within,
your heart thrummed with
an unfamiliar bias
for boys your age.
You realised you could love and feel,
although anything you called love
back then was but a fleeting feeling.
This was a prelude to your girlhood––
when you had the first period stain
and you learnt the quiet rules that
‘whites’ and ‘pastels’ belonged
to only countable consented days.
When your mother told you
it’s no longer your age to play with boys
on streets and games that could
flitter your skirt,
(so that at eighteen, we understood
our skirts were only meant to google upskirting)
and wearing no brassiere meant
you had to unlearn jumping and dancing
(in the gendered sense our mothers meant male gaze)
When sitting open-legged in front
of your uncles was no more innocent
and wearing skirts without shave
meant unattractive,
you knew you were a girl now.
But your mother realised it much before you
when every time, you failed to notice
she would tug your skirt down,
befriend you with girls your age,
wouldn’t let another uncle kiss
you on the cheek: ‘she doesn’t
like being kissed by anyone but me’
the extra pads she’d hide in your bag
to time and again tracking your Uber.
Long before your round breasts moulded,
she knew everyone gazed at you as a girl,
slowly a grown up girl, gradually a woman;
and so it happened everyday that
I realised and felt for myself who I was,
who we were (un)becoming!