TW: Sexual Abuse and Rape
As I unlock my phone
with a password well known,
I swipe and swipe just to come
across headlines that might,
trigger my interior out of good sight.
"Molestation" bewailed the headline,
as I felt anger seeping in with a sign
of no indulgence,
but a crime of aspiring to
excruciate the one molester next in line.
The perpetuity of questions I had wished to ask the criminal
would always seem minimal,
to the crime that they had committed.
Were they ever filled with guilt?
Had they been hopeless for sexuality?
Did they even know the intensity of the crime they had committed?
Or had they realized that their minds were filled with filth?
For the victim in him, it had been an oblivious night but it was still a fearful world.
For the victim in her, it was a day of procedural torment and suffering unswirled.
He wishes to voice out,
but is filled with a notion of doubt.
She wishes to fight and neither does she hide,
but her pen does not glide with that similar might.
"Are YOU still human?", the inquisitive soul inside her asks.
"Were YOU ever human?", his mind retorts.
“Are you not ashamed?”
No, let me rephrase that damning interrogation because you,
YOU are not to be blamed.
We were taught "Not to be molested",
rather than "not to molest", and because of your incredulous actions, we are taught to carry pepper spray everywhere,
and maybe spray all of our freedom into thin air.
“Be safe”, they said
“Don't be out too late” they reiterated.
“Consider yourself lucky for not being a victim and consider yourself unlucky for the wondrousness they have in you, fed”
Because of your wonderful gesture and by your misinterpretation of her mild eyes into wild ones,
she feels that she has lost all meaning.
You taught victims of today not to live by their whims and fancies when all they tried to do was to try to tackle the situation with ease.
To you, Dear Molester:
The man who outraged the modesty of a girl undone, and
The fierce woman who isolated a boy into vile derogation,
my only question to the human in you is-
"Did you rape their minds too?"
- Serchen Chokyi Bhutia
(BMMMC)
(Edited by Anushka and Pallavi
Art curated by Pallavi)
Comments