A Bleeding Girl (Poem)

             

      

  

by Ganesh B. Dhami

A dainty girl of 13 with twin tails and dimply cheeks

Raises her hand in the midst of her maths class in her seventh grade

For she needs to go to the bathroom

As she has felt, for the first time, something wet between her two legs.

Says her super-strict male teacher "This class isn't a bathroom class,

You can't move until you've finished the exercise 3.5."

"Sirrrr ……" before she speaks up, the teacher threatens her again,

"Didn't you listen to me?"

One of her friends tries to explain which too goes in vain.

Now, the dictator's class is over, the Hitler is gone.

 Nevertheless, her cheeks are blushed with shame,

Her skirt soaked with menstrual blood.

She has turned into a paranoid mess.

All the boys have departed homewards.

"Thanks God", school is over but now "how shall I go home?"

Spoke to the nearest girl to check the back of her dress.

There she found stains of blood and suggests her to keep the hanky in her baby hole

From where the unstoppable sludge of blood runs.

She runs towards home with fear, shame, confusion and guilt.

 Hesitant to tell her mother or anyone else enters the quilt.

More than her appetite for food, she is torn with pain.

Observing her behaviour and wearings, mother knows what she has had.

Mother instructs her Dos and Don’ts.

Now she knows why her mother frequently kept pads and tampons in the bath.

(She does not go to her school for the next four days)

She questions:

"Dear vagina, why do you bleed?

Dear feet and back, why do you ache?

Dear breasts, why do you swell?

Dear mood, why do you frequently swing?

Dear acnes, why do you love me so much?

Dear stomach, why do you cramp?

Dear God, why didn't you make me a man?

Suddenly a sound is heard from the invisible persona:

"Dear little angel,

Your body is the geography that can make the mountains tremble

Continents shake and oceans dry.

You own the power to continue the human generation.

Be proud of being female.

Be proud of being a girl.

Be proud of being mother."

[This poem is dedicated to all the girls, sisters and mothers of the world. I hope the girl-students will have the gender-friendly environments at school and specially the male teachers will understand their problems.]