‘Menstruation Poetry’, a recitation of several poems spanning over varied issues related to menstruation was organised on Instagram Live on the occasion of International Menstrual Hygiene Day, May 28, 2021, by Breaking the Silence Worldwide Foundation, an NGO based in Bengaluru that is working to end myths, taboos and stigma associated with menstruation since 2014.
Meaningful discussions around period pain, sexist jokes and behaviour targeting menstruators around Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS), period leave, period exile, sanitary products, solid waste management, the culture of shame and silence, managing menstruation during the pandemic, and call for action ensued after the recitals that featured poems from established writers including Pinky Chandran, a broadcasting journalist, poet, waste management expert and co-founder of Solid Waste Management Round Table; Charmaine Kenita a writer, entrepreneur and Founder of Out O Box Content; Shilok Mukkati a journalist/columnist, artist and independent advocate of inclusivity and diversity; and Urmila Chanam, Founder of Breaking the Silence Worldwide Foundation, menstrual health activist and journalist.
In Pinky’s words, “Poetry is a way of examining our relationships, with the society at large, and helps rationalise, after all menstruation is a health issue to be navigated.”
Click here to find Menstruation Poetry on Instagram.
Seven Days Of Period
I bleed once in a lifetime, and it isn’t a cycle.
I bleed to the birth I can give once in a lifetime.
Is it a period? I say it is.
When I bleed gallons of blood for a week,
indeed, it is my period.
The uterus is unknown to my body, and my blood is
not from the womb, not the womb that my mother bled or my sisters.
My bleeding is different from their stories.
The story that they never heard.
The story of non-cis-genderness.
Tenderness of unusual bleeding.
The bleeding, I never told.
The bleeding, I hushed into myself.
An Obligation, an isolation and a celebration.
My period was the birth of my vagina.
The beginning of my womanhood.
And, I found peace with my bleeding.
Years it waited to break out,
break out from the dysphoria,
Dysphoria of horrors.
I expected a flow of an aggressive river
which waited to blow out.
When she finally did, surprisingly, she was gentle.
White clothes cloaked the seven days of bleeding.
Every droplet of the bleeding spoke of the violence of a binary world.
Every droplet of the bleeding shunned the isolation of toxic masculinity.
Every droplet of the bleeding smiled the celebration of transcendence feminity.
My seven days of period stopped when she was ready to breathe her femininity, she who is Swayambu – self-created one.
–Shilok Mukkati
PMS
I wake up, ready to take on the world,
And then slowly, out of nowhere,
I find pain creeping,
Mild at first, then,
Building, shifting, twisting,
I ignore it,
Going about my day,
With a forced calm,
Making sense of this imposition,
And then suddenly,
I feel knotted and wound up,
I sigh,
Then cry, and I ask why?
I am hurting,
I find no reasons,
I want to vent, and cry
But, I try to disguise,
And put on my best foot forward,
It’s distressing,
I can’t justify,
Like dark clouds, hovering around,
I feel perplexed,
I feel my mood swinging,
Changing, conflicting, contradicting,
I go on an overdrive,
But, my emotions are running a riot,
I feel like a twig ready to snap,
I wonder,
Can rationality co-exist with irrationality?
I need a release,
But then,
A harsh word, or a toast burnt,
Or even a writer’s block,
Is enough to send me crashing…
Bleed In Dignity
I walked, and walked,
Holding my child, in one hand,
Carrying another on my hip,
I walked and walked,
With my meagre belongings,
Mass Exodus,
They called,
Pictures of our walk back home,
Surfaced everywhere,
Some strangers offered food and water,
While some handed out masks,
Some offered sanitary pads,
But was I to do with the pads,
For my privacy was compromised,
Where are the spaces?
When our vulnerabilities don’t matter,
Where are the spaces?
When our existences have been invisibilized?
Where are the spaces?
When, I walked and walked
Where are the spaces?
When we were rendered homeless?
Where are the spaces?
Periods, then my friend
Was a luxury we could not afford…
For we need to bleed in dignity!
– Pinky Chandran
The Colour Of Blood
If only it were as simple as a quiet river running its course
Or a visitor who came by infrequently to mark his presence and collect his dues
One day riding high on a wave and the next drifting at sea
What it would feel like if it didn’t come like clockwork but instead visited freely
The bright hue of luscious red staining our lips or the pop of cherry smiling prettily on our birthday cakes
Are even more welcome in their signs of growing up than…
this redness, this bleed.
In its presence, when it appears
Our worlds are shaken, our thoughts scattered
There’s shame, there’s fear, there’s groaning, there’s revulsion
Why does it have to be us? Isn’t it enough that we’re saddled with everything else?
And together with the pain and the stains, what goes unacknowledged is the crazy mood monster making its presence felt
In the days before this rivulet of red begins to run
Fear and pain, depths and highs of emotions
Keeping us so preoccupied and constantly wrung.
If only it didn’t take a life and a half to truly grasp
That the river that flows bright and blood red, is the font of life itself
That there is nothing more faithful and forgiving as this gush
Returning every month to the same body
Sometimes quiet and gentle, some others roaring and chaotic
For therein lies growing and living, for from it comes little ones, and life itself
To allow it to run its course in a surge of passion and pain
This wildness that changes and transforms young bodies into chalices of quiet strength, with much to gain
Of blood that is rarely spoken, yet even more rarely seen
Blood that’s so essential to us, the absence of which can make millennia of existence cease.
– Dr Charmaine Kenita
That Seething Pain
That seething pain in the abdomen
The numbness in the knees
Forehead smothered with beads of perspiration
Irritation, impatience and exhaustion
What hope was there for me
Were it to occur for the rest of my life
Every month for few days?
That fear of staining my uniform
The distraction from what the teacher was saying
One more reason to be ridiculed
Side lined, silenced and warned
The dynamics in the classroom had changed
The inquisitive and participatory student
Transitioned into a back bencher unsure of herself.
That phase in our lives where no one
Ever asked our opinions on facilities meant for us
At home, in school, bus stand or airports
Did our business changing our pads in the quiet
In ugly, smelly broken toilets with empty buckets
We didn’t expect any better
Someone told us menstruation was dirty
Dirty things are not discussed to improve upon.
That deep line drawn at workplace
Dividing those who bleed from those who don’t
Propagating a lie of a weakness that doesn’t exist
Turning a blind eye to the power within the womb
Failing recognition and acknowledgment
Delaying truth and celebration.
So many seasons have come and gone
All left a mark on me, my body
Marriage, pregnancy, child birth, changing cities
Shifting jobs, parenthood and running a home
I waited for respite from the pain
“When you get married, it will go”, they said
“When you give birth to a child, it will leave you”
The child born will soon be an adult
That seething pain in the abdomen has held on to me.
– Urmila Chanam