Behind the Curtain

I stare out of the window
My eyes blur, my neck hurting
My mind blank because it got used to it
Hundreds of nights as I stayed
Wrestling under men
My self-respect crushed
Brutally
At times so inhuman
I do not want to wake up the next day
To see how my face has turned up

I don’t remember names or colors of their skin
I turn on the automatic mode
My clothes when ripped apart
My bare soul at once covering up my
Nakedness
I do not even shout now
For my insides are hollow with anger
Of treating myself as “life less”
The demon hands that touched me
One day at age eight, ending my innocence

Was it my destiny?
A turn of tides, that swept me to this land
Poverty
Took me to this never-ending darkness then
When the whole world turned their back
The rich come to their knees not for prayer but
To satisfy the hunger lurching in their protruding bellies
Being human, have they forgot when
They raise their belts just for pleasure of
Seeing blood oozing out of my blue skin?

I do not complain to God now
I think he went numb too
I still look out from the window until another night
Hopeless
My brows relaxed as if
In these twenty-two years, I have seen
Hundred years of life unfolding itself
If it was this way then, so hideous
I would prefer to consider
I am towards the end then

BY: Khushboo Dem