Fear I Carry
Forenote: In India, over 80 rapes are reported daily.
This poem is what that number feels like.
It wasn’t merely news.
It caught my breath
in a sudden, silent cage.
Someone else’s daughter,
once again,
became my own.
Fear became my habit,
something I grew up wearing,
and never learned to take off.
The wounds inside me
still breathe,
like hidden demons.
Like glass I shattered,
Scars making me believe
in fragility.
I am a mother now;
My heart lives outside my chest,
And fear is the shadow it casts.
Mother that I am,
My chest now holds two beating hearts.
With every screams,
Killing me half.
Every day
another girl.
Today,
the heart
bleeds again.
© Chitra Arun
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