I am hugely disturbed by an article I have just read. The story left emotions running amok inside me and for a long while, I can't seem to assuage my disquieting heart or stop angry thoughts from racing through my head. Reading my book proves futile. I very much wanted to express that turmoil into a poem or into some written form but I find words inadequate. I can't even articulate an intelligible response to my friend's FB comment about the article. Sure, my feelings are secondary and trivial in comparison to what the girl has to go through. This is not about me. Still the need to say something about it is compelling. I have to get it out of my chest, even though the words are not mine:
"She'd felt earthly desire ebbed - from her heart through to her limbs, into the soil, and she knew, finally, at some point, to leech into the lake - as she had been raped. As the dawn segued into a clear, humid morning and she lay motionless for hours, she knew then what it was like to be a vessel. Life would be easy from then on, because she'd been given to know what emptiness was. This is what Theravada Buddhist monks give up verbal speech for. This is why Hindu ascetics put up one arm for ten years and allow it to atrophy. The piety of transcendence conferred upon Zurotul through utter violation - not the violation in and of itself but the verity that after the most painful and demeaning thing in the world had happened to her, she was still there - not devotional apotheosis; by a crime of opportunity - that the four men had probably already forgotten about, that no one in her village was going to be punished for - not self-cultivation." - Two Ways To Do This by Amanda Lee Koe
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