Inside a washing machine world, we tremble.

I often worry about my clothes when they are in the washing machine.

Once, I sat squatting in front of the soapy round window

To take a peek inside the washing machine world

That I have to send my clothes to, every week.

My mother looks at me the same,

With more frown lines and less intrigue,

When she sends me outside each day.

One laundry day, I decided to take my jacket for washing myself.

After all, my mother, too, insists on dropping me herself, wherever she can.

The fabric drowned it so gently,

Lulled by the quiet gush of murky gray.

It lay on top of the washing machine water,

Above all the other clothes.

And then I just turned on the washing machine timer,

Shifting the knob ever so slightly,

And when I looked to the water again,

The jacket was nowhere to be seen.

It had been taken under.

A similar shock and fear appears

In my mother’s heart

When she does not know my whereabouts;

Or see me in her line of sight,

With her own two eyes.

That is how muted,

Soft and corporeal

My drowning is.

I talk to my sisters,

The women in my world,

And they all tell me

“Women sink to the bottom of the pile,

Stripped of everything.”

That’s just the way it is.

The places we perceive as safe,

Where we go for a certain purpose -

Be it school, the market or god forbid, the club -

Are all murky with gray,

Festering with prey.

Piercing eyes that leak terror into the air,

Hands that cannot keep to themselves

And minds that roam much farther than they should;

No boundaries can be seen in the murky gray waters

Of the washing machine world,

That we wade through each day.

Streetlights, helplines, groups and covered skin,

They do not protect us anymore than

Washing my clothes inside out will.

In hot water, clothes bleed out color regardless.

I live in a country that’s ranked

128th, out of 177,

On the women’s peace and security index.

I live in a world that tells me to get up,

When I’ve been tossed around haphazardly -

By hands I do not know and mouths I do not like -

Expecting me to start anew;

Like a cloth fresh out of the washing machine.