Your fingers will never be enough,
To count the number of times
They called you a slut.
But your soul, your soul is armoured enough,
Their grenades are the seeds you were born from.
They have built a warzone out of your body,
You’re the country they fight over.
But you never asked to be a nation,
You only ever asked to be a mountain,
The bosom of a valley where the sun comes to rest.
They have romanticised your flesh,
Burnt skin like sizzling butter,
Nobody ever wrote odes to the bones that held you up,
To the ribcage that could barely contain your heart.
No, you; you’re the earth, the soil,
You aren’t the roses and tulips they decorated you with,
You’re the moist coarseness that giveth birth,
Everything is, because you are.
Shiuli Dutta is a 21-year-old mass media graduate from Bombay. She is currently chasing her love for languages, having started off with learning French. In the meantime, she juggles words and thinks of writing as a necessity to sustain her soul. An obsessive reader and an enthusiastic animal lover, she hopes to be a published writer in the future. You can follow her work on her personal blog: dreamingcolors.wordpress.com.
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Molly Lichten is a young, talented photographer. View more of her work on Flickr and Facebook, or visit her website, Molly Lichten Photography.