Barren Womb and Other Poems

    By Akhila Mohan CG

    Barren Womb

    Bruised, broken, barren,
    while you leave my body
    bloodless,
    I still birth you
    from my womb – your home –
    and every time
    you leave it,
    shrinking further
    with each passing generation.

    The Memory of Violence

    How vulnerable you become,
    how fragile.
    Bouts of anxiety creep in
    every day, every night.

    Healing becomes a myth,
    when the memory of violence,
    echoes from
    the dark alleys of mind.

    You squirm in pain,
    uninvited tears
    swell up your eyes
    in anticipation.

    The memory of violence never fades away
    it grows profound,
    day by day, night by night, year by year.

    Akhila Mohan CG is a poet and writer, currently based in Bengaluru. She is the co- founder of a creative firm, ArtLit: An Art & Literary Community. Her works have been published in literary spaces including Madras Courier, Juggernaut, Readomania, and others. Tamarind: Sweet and Sour Poems about Love, Loss, Longing, and Life (Kitaab) is her debut poetry collection. Shortlisted for the Women’s Web Orange Flowers Awards 2023 (Poetry category), she won the P.B. Shelley – Youth’s Unextinguished Fire International Poetry Award, 2021 and also participated as a panelist at the New Delhi World Book Fair 2023. A domestic violence survivor, she is currently working on her second book, to crush dogmas surrounding divorce and remarriage.

    Social Handles:
    Instagram:  akhila_mohan_cg
    Facebook: Akhila Mohan CG 
    Twitter:  AkhilasBookNook 
    LinkedIn:  Akhila CG 

    Subscribe to our newsletter To Recieve Updates

      The Latest
      • Inheritance Burnt Side Up

        Shrinking to Fit: Women, Buses, and the Gendered Commute in Bangalore

      • Bulldozed in the Bus

        Shrinking to Fit: Women, Buses, and the Gendered Commute in Bangalore

      • The Invisible Orientation

        Girls Who Stray: Anisha on Women, Desire & Rebellion

      • The Matchbox by Usawa #08

        Preparing Silence, Normalising Everydayness & More

      You May Also Like
      • Sprouts by Tapan Mozumdar

        Vanaja will be fifteen next August All her friends have seen periods

      • Echoes from the woods by Rahul Ranjan

        Over the past many decades, social movements led by indigenous and other rural

      • War and Women: Breaking the Code of Silence. A Conversation between Dr. Garima Srivastava and Dr. Neekee Chaturvedi

        During her two-year stay in Croatia Garima Srivastava tried to record in her

      • Fiona by Rachel Chitofu

        I’ll still remember the big amber traffic light beaming on like a wristwatch