by Gauri Awasthi
We are small women
and we knew it
when you left each one of us
for the other
and sneered about it
at one of your guy gang only meets
while our skeletons rotted in your attic.
Our bones too brittle to move
we touched each other like lizards
and regenerated spines and voices and stories.
You call us nasty bitches, widowed wolves
desperate for your love and tell your new prey
about the tapeworms clinging on our tongues
(This is how you think women fall in love
a tinge of jealousy strewed with competition.)
You say nothing about the skinning
that smolded our scutes
She’ll smell us one day, like we smelt
each other out of your life
(This is how strong women protect their lovers, she thinks.)
We’ll show our shredding trail
why should I believe you? she’ll say again
ask us why now, where-when and how
questions that we’ll shed like snake skin.
There are no marks on our body
no clumps of burnt hair to show her,
how deep you dug your claws to peel every inch
why now, why now she’ll chant like a hymn.
We dreamt you’d wake us up one morning again
with lilies and say I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry
kneeling by the side of our beds.
We are small women,
we forgive easy so you never came.
She was a crazy cunt, she’ll write a poem
or two and be alright
and it echoed in humdrum
that we are small women
they don’t tell us why they leave,
we’re small women
our ancestors should’ve taught us to heal.
We are small women
like ants, we sweat to make tunnels to mounds
So one day we can bury you beneath them.
Gauri Awasthi is an Indian poet and sustainability activist. She is currently an MFA Poetry candidate at McNeese State University, where she has been awarded The John Wood Poetry Prize. She has recently received a fellowship from Sundress Academy For The Arts.