Street harassment Inc. – 2

Seed (haibun)

My 13-year-old breasts are a growing, budding nuisance that feel weighty and uncomfortable under my petticoat and school pinafore. It is too early for a bra so my mother buys snug cotton vests meant for very young boys.

I wear them for a year before graduating to a bra.

It takes time getting used to this strap of a bandage around the ribs and back, that would always always have to be worn from now on, like a norm.

One afternoon while walking home from school, a group of boys accost me.

A tall boy reaches out, grabs, and squeezes my breast. The shanties around are deserted. Somewhere, a TV set blares.

I watch them go.

For days after that, I search the faces of passersby, wherever I go. Did they see it? Do they know what happened to me?

But not until my buttocks are pinched and breasts elbowed, not until lewd remarks change to lucid pick-up lines in the swelling years of my womanhood, do I realize there is an archive of ‘thesevery common things’, these unwritten norms.

phosphorus sky –

the gulmohar bursts

 into flames