Scribble Stories by Priya Roy

 I

The last time I wrote about love, I wrote about you.
Every time I wrote about love, I wrote about you.
Sometimes, I reopen my wounds to look over them, to agonize and to cry again over the same pain. Most of the time, my body screams so I block them with my drain hair. There is something about drain hair, they don't let anything pass through them.
Sometimes my body is like a land of sands, parched and pricked by my own touch.
So, I am writing again about love today and I am writing about the wounds that I have opened and I am knitting them again. One by one, carefully looking at each one. Knitting and looking and then again knitting.
I am writing again about love today except that this time, I am writing about me.  

Photographed by Priya Roy

II

The ‘gentleman’ who told you,
that the spot between your legs are meant to be played with, hushed you with a lie. He said, ‘genteel’ girls don’t shout when an elder speaks.
The next time, when he touched you,
You were afraid to say, STOP. Because you were afraid that the dirt has already reached places.
When it pained, you wanted to cry, cry for help, but the voice wouldn't come out and your hands were too little to make it stop.

When those ‘gentle’ hands finally went off your body,
You started hating it,
Instead of embracing your womanhood,
You started asking what was the silence for? Where was the roar of the lion when it needed to come out?
So, now when someone degrades you as powerless and little, you don’t speak, you don’t raise your voice because you have been silent for so long that you have forgotten what it is to be screaming.
Your own very perfect body became your sin.
And the mind, that should have been an asylum, was shut down with a lock.