After Hathras
After Unnao
After Badaun
After Kathua
After cities upon cities of being someone
else’s property and your own body’s victim.
Anger was something we hadn’t forgotten
yet hope reigned the weather,
to survive we saw it in paperwork that will never yield.
The post-mortem of the crime
never judged the perpetrator
only the victim hung from the branch.
My flailing arm had a clenched fist
till the end,
a nameless body with severed nails,
petticoats were dirty.
Maybe we were running too fast through the field,
the wind lashing at our faces.
Blue welts hence, were a weather phenomenon
and not the sign of a broken femur.
They boxed-up a collective of maybe I shouldn’t have
done this and that,
placed the blame right back on me
when they could’ve curated a book of all those footprints.
A few measuring tapes, swabs, undernail riots
and penetrating fingers.
Add a thunder to equate with my voice
and settling in the air, my absence left behind.
Kanchi Sharma is a poet who writes about social, identity and class politics. Her work has appeared in a number of literary journals including the PANK Magazine and HEART Online.
Featured image credit: Jari Hytönen/Unsplash