Safe Box

For as long as I remember,

My body was a safe box.

Safe box for insecure men to keep their fragile pride and lechery.

Safe box that men could carry and call their own.

So I took short breaths behind the veil.

While my story was being by men who 'owned' me.

I whispered to the ashes of goddesses and sisters before me.

I cried for justice

I fought for it

I bled for it

I was named the sinner and I was the sin.

They named me the reason they killed.

It wasn't honourable to believe in my wants and needs.

I was diminished from a living and breathing entity with the rage and fire to a mere vessel, an object to trade and share.

It was indeed my body but I have no right over it.

Do I?

Words by Anushka Hemnani

Image credit: Anushka Hemnani