By Sana Agarwal
This house reminds me of all the words I could never spell
and the ones that would keep yapping jarringly
‘No’ sticks at the upper palate of my mouth
like the first word that lost its worth when I was thirteen
‘Please’ etched in my mind like a prayer i memorised and chanted as a kid, beseeching them to stay to love (to be)
home reminds me of
every night I held onto myself
cradled my self worth in a cot
like carrying a stillborn as a preteen
i never learnt how to spell ‘worthy’ but there were some i knew well
the way your voice drove shivers down my spine taught me how to spell ‘terror’ even when i’m half asleep, unable to breathe
every festival at the balcony
firecrackers looked like cannons firing
for I was standing in a battlefield
learning that love is synonymous of violence
- Fatherhood /ˈfɑːðəhʊd/
noun
‘The state of being a father violence’
‘A knife that never stops cutting’
synonym
‘House’
this house is not my home
home feels like antiseptic on my bruised arms
like finally winning a game of spelling bee
like a warm bath after walking on thin ice, shivering to death your whole life
learning to slowly unwrap the arms you clenched around yourself so tightly and letting someone hold you together instead
home is returning from war and not the battlefield itself
it is not the prayer you memorised as a kid or the fear you gulped down like rotten milk
it is not pleading it is loving it is not dreading
it is loving it is not violence it is loving
most of all home reminds me i’ve bones made of stone, a gut made of steel and
blood made of her
she carved a home out of love for me in this house of misery
she caressed me in her womb for months
not for me to crinkle and fall at a man’s feet
not for me to break and shiver at a man’s voice
home taught me
not to bow down and not to bleed
not to make weapons out of parts of me
for violence is not what love resembles
and home is not a house but a person
- Motherhood /ˈmʌðəhʊd/
noun
‘State of being a mother loving’
synonym
‘Home’
