Brown Girl Bride

By Nahyian Elias

(After Sylvia Plath)

 

Brown pulled-back skin,

skin on smoldering skin

red saris, they tell you,

 

parties of turmeric are in

and gold adornments in glitter,

glitz and glimmer.

 

I am not a bride but a prize

a prize for his eyes

do I drip rubies, blood?

 

Bite my already red tongue

like they say I should?

Palms upright, woody scent

 

mehendi¹ dances paisley

up my arms covering scars

on the wrist and fragments

 

of a gruesome tale–

a rose, an anklet, a veil.

I will never reveal

 

to him how it felt to cut into

my own body.

To bleed at thirteen

 

on purpose, somewhere

that was not between my legs.

I will never be real.

 

I do not choose. I wait.

At five, my mother dressed me

like a bride, like a fever dream

 

like the lehengas² I eventually

outgrow, year after year, falling

apart at the seams

 

when I talk she doesn’t seem

to hear. My body grows, and grows

until it can’t anymore.

 

Boys notice. Did you think

I would be able to stop it?

did you think, ma,

 

that my body would be

his prize at twenty-five

that I would disguise–

 

not even Eve could resist

pooling into the serpent’s eyes.

I don’t care for paradise.

 

There is nothing there

no smoke in the air

and if I can’t have it here,

 

what makes you think

I can have it up there?

As far as I am aware

 

crimson spotted silk, gold lace

this place, this space

this wretched rotted place

 

this smile, these arms

and ankles, henna markings.

My mother yells at me for

 

the cuts on my wrists.

I listen as she lists all the things

that hurt her.

 

It is a short list.

She insists

on them listing them anyway.

 

I am a witch, she says, I am a

scarlet witch at the stake.

I take and I take.

 

I do it asleep, and awake.

I do not burn in the fire.

My only sin is desire.

 

I am not a liar,

but an actor.

I believe

 

believing your truths

to be a great factor.

I perform.

 

I perform.

I rehearse and I perform.

A curse, a curse

 

a generational curse.

I break it.

and I break it.

 

Red silk sari, fall loosely

from my waist

let them taste, let them taste.

 

Nahyian Elias is a Bangladeshi-American writer living in New York City. She holds a Master’s Degree in English Adolescent Education from Hunter College.