Barren Womb and Other Poems

Barren Womb

Bruised, broken, barren,
while you leave my body
bloodless,
I still birth you
from my womb – your home –
and every time
you leave it,
shrinking further
with each passing generation.

The Memory of Violence

How vulnerable you become,
how fragile.
Bouts of anxiety creep in
every day, every night.

Healing becomes a myth,
when the memory of violence,
echoes from
the dark alleys of mind.

You squirm in pain,
uninvited tears
swell up your eyes
in anticipation.

The memory of violence never fades away
it grows profound,
day by day, night by night, year by year.

Akhila Mohan CG is a poet and writer, currently based in Bengaluru. She is the co- founder of a creative firm, ArtLit: An Art & Literary Community. Her works have been published in literary spaces including Madras Courier, Juggernaut, Readomania, and others. Tamarind: Sweet and Sour Poems about Love, Loss, Longing, and Life (Kitaab) is her debut poetry collection. Shortlisted for the Women’s Web Orange Flowers Awards 2023 (Poetry category), she won the P.B. Shelley – Youth’s Unextinguished Fire International Poetry Award, 2021 and also participated as a panelist at the New Delhi World Book Fair 2023. A domestic violence survivor, she is currently working on her second book, to crush dogmas surrounding divorce and remarriage.

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