Tishani Doshi : Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods.

Girls are coming out of the Woods Girls are coming out of the woods, wrapped in cloaks and hoods, carrying iron bars and candles and a multitude of scars, collected on acres of premature grass and city buses, in temples and bars. Girls are coming out of the woods with panties tied around their lips, making such a noise, it’s impossible to hear. Is the world speaking too? Is it really asking, What does it mean to give someone a proper resting? Girls are coming out of the woods, lifting their broken legs high, leaking secrets from unfastened thighs, all the lies whispered by strangers and swimming coaches, and uncles, especially uncles, who said spreading would be light and easy, who put bullets in their chests and fed their pretty faces to fire, who sucked the mud clean off their ribs, and decorated their coffins with brier. Girls are coming out of the woods, clearing the ground to scatter their stories. Even those girls found naked in ditches and wells, those forgotten in neglected attics, and buried in river beds like sediments from a different century. They’ve crawled their way out from behind curtains of childhood, the silver-pink weight of their bodies pushing against water, against the sad, feathered tarnish of remembrance. Girls are coming out of the woods the way birds arrive at morning windows – pecking and humming, until all you can hear is the smash of their miniscule hearts against glass, the bright desperation of sound – bashing, disappearing. Girls are coming out of the woods. They’re coming. They’re coming. Courtesy : Tishani Doshi, Bloodaxe Books, thehindu.com