Of longings, of belongings

Women and the earth have to tolerate a lot. 
–Kaajal (1965)

I heard it when my last light bulb cracked, 
the other night, blurring and retiring into  
invisible chemtrails, to a familiar pit stop of rage 
doting on me, turning inside me 
writhing, even, in anger,
stilling against the salving cannonade 
of screaming girls by 14th street park-posts.
I saw them emerge first with flash lights, 
then the air dimmed on them. NO! They resisted,
holding over each other–armed with flambeaus,
armed with nothing,
armed with bodies used to the touch 
of the yellow-bellied night thieves. They romance 
with our wounds and come to collect names–
she didn't have to be Nirbhaya, 
when she was scared to death.
I will not say I was made to bear through these fractures,
I will not keep in silence;
in plaintive silence
that maims every enduring gut in my incorporeality
seeping into the riot, seeping into the rot,
aligning together like constellation discs before
the paling blue of the night,
like oysters spread open and hewn away from 
the dulling shells that once housed 
them safe. The pith of our survival despairs 
in contempt, one thin glow of memory each,
cram-full–cutting us belly up
as we read the headlines of
girls in boats, and girls in scraps
and girls on the roofs in burlap sacks;
Girls that teeth to split apart
like tearing flesh from a vulture's cadaver.
It's not their story, but they have bled too,
It's not my story, 
but I am scathed too,
What do you know about longing for a small place
on this earth, of prosaic yearnings
no quieter than what you have said too.
Have you ever belonged to nobody
swallowing beneath the night like 
a lion, blousing your vulnerability 
out into the dark streets, bathing and whispering
into a clean, untainted wind like a free bird?
Have you ever belonged at all, 
Have you ever?

Snata Basu is a writer based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Her poetry has appeared on numerous literary platforms including The Opiate, Visual Verse: An Online Anthology of Art and Words and Small World City.