Dreamgirl
“What I miss about love is the yielding”
– Kamala Das
When men want me, I get caught up
in the wind, the storm of it all. The urge
to fashion myself into a fantasy, so driven
by desire to make myself a memory or a story
something without scraggly hangnails and fat thumbs—
I find myself flipping my hair often. Girl-making
is a dangerous activity, all well-timed smiles
and the right amount of perfume. I’m building something,
I want to say, something secret, a girl only you know.
Access is the key to having a good time with these thing—
to grant permission, or, like Kamala said to yield and yield
and yield. My body sometimes forgets her politics
and wants to dance for men who might forget
everything eventually, but I will too. Yielding,
to be less your own, feels like ice on hot skin
in summer and the relief of saying, have me,
have me, have me because desire is sharp
and gives me to the world, and I love
giving myself away like this, you can
have everything, anything that you want,
except the poems. They’re all mine.
Appears in —
Yamini Krishnan
Yamini Krishnan is a writer whose poetry and essays have been published in the Penguin Book of Indian Poets, Bombay Literary Magazine, and Scroll.in, among other publications. She currently resides in New Delhi— you can find her poetry at @yaminikrishnan_ on Instagram.
Enjoyed the writing? Share it and support the writer.
more from this issue —
“What I miss about love is the yielding”
– Kamala Das
When men want me, I get caught up
in the wind, the storm of it all. The urge
to fashion myself into a fantasy, so driven
by desire to make myself a memory or a story
something without scraggly hangnails and fat thumbs—
I find myself flipping my hair often. Girl-making
is a dangerous activity, all well-timed smiles
and the right amount of perfume. I’m building something,
I want to say, something secret, a girl only you know.
Access is the key to having a good time with these thing—
to grant permission, or, like Kamala said to yield and yield
and yield. My body sometimes forgets her politics
and wants to dance for men who might forget
everything eventually, but I will too. Yielding,
to be less your own, feels like ice on hot skin
in summer and the relief of saying, have me,
have me, have me because desire is sharp
and gives me to the world, and I love
giving myself away like this, you can
have everything, anything that you want,
except the poems. They’re all mine.
Appears in —
Yamini Krishnan
Yamini Krishnan is a writer whose poetry and essays have been published in the Penguin Book of Indian Poets, Bombay Literary Magazine, and Scroll.in, among other publications. She currently resides in New Delhi— you can find her poetry at @yaminikrishnan_ on Instagram.
Enjoyed the writing? Share it and support the writer.
