I Will Sleep Now

By Ananya Chatterjee

I will sleep now ...
Take my womanhood
Off this flesh and
Hang it on a corner peg
For these hours of slumber
I will lie
Neither poised as a woman,
Nor alert as a mother ...
But curled up like
An unborn fetus
I will snore, sexless
And forget everything
Even my gender
Till the morrow brings
More news of
Writhing, shrieking women

A severed umbilical cord
somewhere.
Elsewhere,
a severed hymen.