Soul sisters,

We are scribbling under someone’s dream

With sunburnt teeth, just like silkworms

In hope of being butterflies one day.

But, we are unscrolled into a

Silky silence ironed flat and kept in

Pouches made of our tissues .

// The sheep skins bleached, dyed

and then put in the sun//

We carry portable bombs in our

Broken hearts and realize that

There is no simple present,

Only present continues tense.

// Our presents are auctioned

long before we are born//

We make our tragedies into silly jokes

And cry in the way our mothers

Taught us to- silently.

We tape knives into our palms

and see angels melting into

red coloured atoms under midnight sun.

//Its Saturday night.

Every saint is turning into a rapist//

Our souls are so small to fit into a match box

in the shirt pocket of satan or god.

Every prayer our grandmothers made us chant

Hang upside down in the dark,

like little bats who lost their way

on a school midnight trip.

// Our eyelashes are our rosaries//

Spiders are mending the broken corners of

Our house, quite unsuccessfully.

Strays look into our eyes,

Searching if we are one of them.

And they nudge us with their wet nose,

For reasons only we understand.

//glowing during our autopsies are t

he shared hormones of a stray dog  and us//

Soul sisters,

Don’t you know if we go swimming

And touch the bottom of lake,

We can smell a fish’s cry and a dead girl’s laugh?

It is one of them who taught us counting,

Where numbers and names are same.

//If you listen hard, you can hear

Her singing  “Matilda” //

We leave apples to ripen under their

Sweet smooth skins and

whip our smiles into cute birthday cakes.

Our captors drink them ,

And confuse the meaning of

equality and justice.

Our celestial bones are crushed

And are adorned as tooth picks

In their meaty hands to bring back

Stories of another fear.

// We are examples no one should dare to study//

They are two ears stuffed with privilege,

And claim that we are mute.

Our prophecies hang around them

like hair extensions of a banyan tree.

// Who will translate us without

Their tongues twisting? //

We sign language the sky,

To learn the pronunciation of ‘cross’ and ‘craws’.

We let rain to gut our throats

And see the words living in our nails.

// Everybody has an opinion on us

Even the strange rain //

We are blurry princesses

Who disappers without being

wished to be disapperared,

who have to live despite

the wish to be dead.

// Our bodies are full of holes

death is the only  beauty we long for//

Soul sisters,

We will rise under the nostrils of gods

Who can curse us and bless us,

But couldn’t save us.

We will look for venus in the smog

And tiptoe through dark valleys.

Stars will align in our spines,

A constellation of light in our eyes.

Soul sisters,

But for now,

Who will cry for us?

 


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