My Tagless Name

(Written as a part of International Women's Day 2018. This poem was published in Delhi Poetry Slam on March 15 2018.)


I'm Beautiful.
But,
I'm called inferior,
I'm a Housewife.
I'm called a bitch,
I'm a Whore.
I'm named as powerless,
I'm the Company CEO.
I'm called the blabbering witch,
I'm a Grandma.
I'm called careless
I'm a Nurse.
I'm known as no sex,
I'm a Trans.
I'm termed as the backward,
I'm an Indian.
I may not be fond of men,
But that doesn't define me.
I cannot be reduced to a column
in an application form.
My hands and legs are exuberant enough
to do sundry duties.
I change my cloaks several times,
and hide in tangled forests, expecting
your empty handed return.
My ugliness laughs at your hollowness as
I bath in the Blue Sea.
I walk around the globe and touch
your horoscopic stars.
I tread through your ways ,
the prisoner light breaks its shackles and encroaches my body.
I shatter my names coined by you,
I coined my name and
denounced your parenthood.
I fly high without tags with prisoner light,
and your neck aches.
And again,
I'm Beautiful.

                 A.C