I wasn’t dainty, 
I was sensual and loud, 
A life full of opinions
Wrapped around me like a shroud.
Naivety separated me from the crowd,
My head remained mostly in the clouds.
The coquettish, crass way that I moved about –
Even my ignorance made me proud.
The way that never once would I
now
Take validation in exchange for a bow.
I’m not sure I would even know how –
That’s something I couldn’t allow.
I mistook being wanted
For being seen, Thought desire itself Meant something clean.
Men loved my mouth
Until it bit back,
Loved the performance
Until I went off script.
I carried recklessness
Like perfume on my wrists, Entered rooms half-burning, Leaving smoke where I kissed.
I knew how to tempt, But not how to stay, Every affection | touched I somehow turned strange. 

There was always a war
Between softness and pride, Between wanting devotion And nowhere to hide.
I made mythology
Out of being misunderstood,
Romanticised damage
The way lonely girls would.
And God – I was lonely.
Not visibly. Never plain.
I dressed hurt in silk,
Made a spectacle out of pain.
I’d laugh too loudly,
Speak before thinking,
Then lie awake afterwards
Feeling myself sinking.
Still, I cannot betray her – That younger version of me.
Ill-informed, dramatic,
Achingly free.
She refused to kneel
Where others performed grace, Would rather be difficult Than be put in her place.
Even now, older,
More careful somehow,
I still feel her rising In the arch of my brow.
In the refusal to shrink, In the venomous wit, In the hunger to matter Without begging for it.
So no – I wasn’t dainty.
I was difficult, vain, alive.
Too sharp at the edges
To be easily liked.
But I survived myself,
Which is no small thing,

Image: Ambady Kolazhikkaran