Skip to main content

Morality

Young Sheela
Comes from a household
Where her father left
To be with another woman
Leaving Sheela and her mother
To face the neighbours
Who call them names
That have no English translation.

So Sheela
Goes looking for love
In a society that shuns it
In the name of
Immorality.

But Sheela
Hears the promise of being loved
From a boy who is loved
As a fruit of
Patriarchy.
And the boy instead
Is looking for sex
In a girl so naive
She knows not what it means.

So Sheela
Does what she must
For this boy to stay
But tells no one at all
For the sake of
Morality.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

I Wanted to be a Candle

I wanted to be a candle Bright with a flame Lighting up the face Of the movement. I wanted to be a candle Ablaze inbetween fingers Of a fiery envoy Of justice. I wanted to be a candle Alight all its life The harbinger of light In dark times. I wanted to be a candle I had felt the fire inside But when I looked into a mirror I saw a Matchbox instead. My small colourful self Carries not one but several flames Matchsticks for each occasion For every injustice in the way. My fire is contagious It is the spark before the flame I am meant to light the candles I was born to inspire the change.

What is leaving really like

Once you decide to leave a city You imagine all the final goodbyes And what they’ll feel like Much much before your last day arrives. You make a mental list or a tangible one Of all the places to revisit And the people to meet So many memories to celebrate And moments to regreet. You smile in the distance imagining What those people may say And what you may say in return Almost looking forward to The teary smiles and warm hugs And you wonder whether Those who have wronged you Will come clean and apologise You wipe away a tear when you realise How everyone will wish There was still some more time. But there isn’t. And you struggle to find space For every promised catchup And the new ones who casually said “We must meet before you leave” Some evenings you want to pause Skip dinner and get early to bed But the days are already too brief And you can’t afford any regrets. As the final week draws close You notice the other lasts The last time you cross  The city’s bustling market Or find...

Will You?

Will you give me the freedom To face the cold alone Yet share your warmth When I reach out to you? When I return shivering Unable to say anything Will you be there for me And wrap yourself around? With my hair scattered And my vision blurred Bare feet on the ground Will you still hold me close? And will you do it Again and again... Like a towel after a winter bath?