For this month, I am posting a poem in honor and in memory of the woman who was raped and tortured on a bus in New Delhi, India on the night of December 16th, 2012. She was a 23-year-old physiotherapy student who was returning home with a friend after seeing the film Life of Pi. She was referred to in the media as Amanat which is the Urdu word for treasure.

 

Amanat

 

The hyena kills the zebra,

then the orangutan.

 

The tiger kills the hyena.

And the boy survives.

 

Pi is an irrational number.

And a woman boards a bus.

 

If horses could draw,

they would draw one god

 

in the shape of a horse.

Oxen would draw many,

 

each with a body like their own.

And the bus is not really a bus.

 

The relationship

between the width of a circle

 

and its circumference

continues infinitely without

 

repeating. And Pi is a boy

who just wants to love

 

God. If dark matter could draw,

it would not draw itself.

 

The human intestine

is approximately five feet long.

 

Only five percent of hers

would remain. They would be called

 

joyriders. The instrument used was

metal. The instrument used

 

was flesh. And the woman,

it was said, died peacefully.

 

– First published in CALYX, Fall/Winter 2015