Shakti.

I stood there helplessly, drowning in defeat,
darkened by my inability to breathe life into
your rusted heart's resilient beat—
a symphony I memorized from the inside,

in forty weeks.

Incapable of returning you to the raven haired beauty of your prime, I bite my tongue until I'm numb, as if my lips have been sewn shut with twine.

You heal me when you hold me then transport me back in time, to the days of yesteryear, when I was still your innocent, little child.

I am haunted by the trauma when I will one day find, that I can no longer turn to you for comfort, or the reassurance of your smile.

I know I run but I am frightened, when I see you've become so frail.My mind refuses a reality where you are no longer my nightingale.

Your song lulled me into slumber, as you softly sang the world to sleep.

If only I had looked at you long enough to see,
that all you were ever doing was trying to love me.

There is no bond like that between a mother and her only son, even if he is less deserving of
her pride than he is of her scorn. 

Mamta.

Your strained voice
cries out to me, like the sage sitar.
It sings a sobering song
that transports me through sand.

Suddenly, a memory of your
loving care becomes so real.

I watch, awestruck,
as you took my tears
then weaved them into cloth.
Embroidered with golden silks
you pulled from the fabric
of your heart.

We never had much,
but your patience had me convinced
you were the palace in which we lived.

I exhale—only the warmth of love
and adoration escapes from my lungs;
in you, we have the stars.

Despite the struggle,
we only ever tasted the sweet saffron
you skillfully slipped into our souls.

Shalimar is in you;
my mother IS a Taj Mahal.
Her every breath's a nectar;
it is cardamom's caress.

I would reanimate a hundred thousand times
just to relive the splendour of her shadow;
it was the sunrise of my lifetime.

I would relive every sadness behind my eyes
just to breathe the soothing citrus-scented air
of her orange grove.

I have never come so close to saintliness,
and I can soundly say
my spirit has never been the same.

Birds Of A Feather.

She walks with her head held high, with the majesty of birds of prey. With her hips swinging rhythmically, she commands any room she enters, turning heads for different reasons. Her gait emulates American bald eagles, yet society solely see her as a peacock.

A woman can only be pretty, they say her beauty is all that defines her. These double standards are restrictive, and prevent girls from becoming hawks; it forces them into a brand, then keeps them locked up in a box.

Pigeonholed by the age of three, young women are being programmed to believe they can only be desired for their looks.
They are discouraged from being bold, ridiculed for being brave but males—they can be anything and are supported by their peers.

For a female to be confident like a crow, or as self-important as a snowy owl is demeaning. She must possess the grace of a crane, or like a bird of paradise, she should be aesthetically appealing.  

Some of her sisters even keep their distance, choosing to side with their oppressors who coop them up like chickens. What they fail to see is that these false concepts were created by frightened men in suits in conference rooms, and board room meetings.  

They were designed to keep women inferior, and confined to lives centred on their wombs which they cannot even control. Unjust ideals invented to prevent equality, to ensure that daughters of Eve stay in their lanes that lead to dead ends on one way streets. 

For a sister or a mother to aspire to fly is laughable to men who have never even attempted to take flight. They think their superiority is innate, because their fathers tell them lies that are then corroborated by heads of state.

Whether equality is ever achieved or not, I still believe it is more admirable to be a bird with clipped wings who is determined to soar, than a cowardly ostrich with his head buried deep in the dirt.

It is still preferable to see these young ladies rallying together as ravens, instead of conceding to defeat from their counterparts, cackling geese who have become complacent. 

Comfortable with the idea of spending their existence as common pheasants instead of daring to be different.  Wrens whose wings were rendered obsolete, toucans who traded in beaks for pressed white dress shirts, higher wages, and a false concept of masculinity that is so weak.

They are threatened by free women, like the huntress lioness who provides for her hungry children. Men are emasculated by matriarchs who are self-sufficient as their existence relies on feeling needed.  A woman who prevails without a male unnerves them to their very core.

Without the women they marginalized, upon whom they are still dependent, these daft dodo birds helplessly become endangered. They are then sentenced to death by the same double standards they delivered, a fate more bittersweet than it is sour.  

Even the most explicitly misogynistic males transform into mourning doves once they are deprived of their subjugated swans' direction. Suddenly, there is no evidence of their strength and they are lost without the guidance of the quetzal queens they counted as mere possessions.