Part-girl, Part-woman, Girl-woman

Mallorca, Spain © Photograph by Author, 2023

I was thirteen and ten months

Drenched in a pool of my own blood

They said, ‘praayamaayi*— she’s come of age, she’s a woman’

But I didn’t feel like one

I was just a girl drenched in my own blood

Who couldn’t wait to tell her friends

Who couldn’t wait to lend her sanitary napkin to a friend in dire need and save her day

Who couldn’t wait to nod in agreement when everyone spoke of menstrual cramps and blood clots.

Since that day, I’ve bled for nineteen years

And still don’t feel whole-woman

I’m part-girl, part-woman, girl-woman.

Who gets to decide?

And what makes a girl a woman anyway?

Her first period, her first bra, her first orgasm, her first love?

Being objectified, scrutinised, judged, scored, and ranked?

Being made to feel unsafe, touched, groped and hurt?

Wedding garbs, or birth and after-birth?

I hold on to my girl-woman-hood

Unwilling to cross that threshold into whole-woman-hood

Let me just be

A thirty-two-year-old girl-woman

Part-girl, part-woman, girl-woman.

*praayamaayi : In my mother tongue ‘Malayalam’, spoken in the South Indian state of Kerala, this phrase roughly translates to saying a girl has attained menarche, or reproductive maturity