Women Like Her Breathe Fire - Kavya Janani. U

A roar is caught in her throat,
as she notices him watching blaring videos
Swimming in a lake of idiotic sentiments,
that do not work in a lion’s household.
There are these ghastly dialogues,
Where misogyny croaks a terrible ballad.
He still does not realize
that a man who eats sexism for breakfast
is a man who dies of his wife’s liberalism
Forming a noose around his neck.
He still does not understand
that her pen is sharper than his dominance,
And that she rips his audacities
and throws them into her poems,
where he bleeds to death between her lines.

He’d melt like snow for women
soaked in turmeric traditions,
who drape cotton yards around them,
streaking their foreheads with crimson,
Who fall at his feet every waking hour
and do not address him by his name,
Who plait their oily tresses
and adorn it with kanakambaram,
Who’d undertake endless servitude,
and who’d never say no to his orders.
He does not realize that the scene
would be different once those women
learn the art of domestic equality.

She is someone whose life is yellow,
confidence oozing from her pores,
that his carnal fingers dare not touch,
Sunshine dropping from her eyes
like a cascading waterfall,
which does not cloak him in warmth,
but burns him every time she speaks
Of modernity and gender inequality.
Her bare forehead is his everyday misery.
Her t-shirts and denim are his allergies
that he buys black dupattas
and places them at the charpoy in the hall.
She always remembers to ignore them.

Doesn’t he still realize that the walls
of their house echo the story
of two people strongly fallen out of love?
Of one wanting to grow and improve,
learn from poets and entrepreneurs,
and watch Northern Lights someday.
And the other wanting to sweep
the by-lanes of barren lands,
gossiping about familial discords,
And waste time over and over.
The boon of motherhood
is the only unfortunate string
that still bonds her to him.
He saves it for the fear of finding
himself in the jaws of disgrace.
It is true that the one
Who listens to Swift can never
be compatible with the one
Who listens to country-folk songs.
In this tale, opposites repel.

She wears labels, albeit proudly-
Maddest, shameless, loudest.
Yes, women like her
scare the shit out of men like him.
Women like her adorn strength
like garlands around their necks.
Her skin is not made of madness.
He turned it like that.
He drowns in his pride,
while she sings loudly,
“Pride always comes before a fall”,
and pelts stones at his toxic masculinity.

Originally published by Sledgehammer Lit Magazine, October 2021

Kavya Janani. U is the author of the poetry collections La Douleur Exquise and From The Land of Longing. She has also self-published a romance novel and two standalone sci-fi novelettes. Her poems have appeared in Sunday Mornings at The River and Sledgehammer Lit. She also publishes her poetry on her Substack website – Dreamy Poet. She is a banker by profession and currently resides in Chennai, India.