Woman

by Vinita Agrawal

She believes in the renewal of the sun.

Preserves the light of early morning in her hair.

Sets aside an infinity of space for lunar madness. 

Feasts. Day fires. Mists. Rain.

On secret days she curls upon herself

and lies on dreams soft like grass beneath her skin.

Her lips are a great precipice. Her voice is a shape

that moulds hearts. Fills heads.

She is what she left behind in your eyes:

swan hips, unclouded face gazing gazelle-like at you.

She is a woman. She won't trade touch for love.

But if love is what she feels, she will fill her womb with your life.

* * * * *

Author of Words Not Spoken (Brown Critique/Sampark) and The Longest Pleasure (Finishing Line Press, USA) and The Silk Of Hunger (AuthorsPress, Delhi), Vinita is a Mumbai based, award winning poet and writer. She is the Contributing Editor for www.thewomaninc.com. She won the Gayatri GaMarsh Memorial Award 2015 for literary excellence, NJ, USA. Her poems have appeared in Asiancha, Constellations, The Fox Chase Review, Pea River Journal, Open Road Review, Stockholm Literary Review, Poetry Pacific and other national and international journals. Her poems have been widely anthologized in Indo-Australian compilations. She was nominated for the Best of the Net Awards 2011, awarded first prize in the Wordweavers Contest 2014, commendation prize in the All India Poetry Competition 2014 and won the 2014 Hour of Writes Contest thrice.  She has read at SAARC events in Delhi and Agra at Hyderabad for the U.S. Consulate to celebrate Women Poets Of India, at Delhi for Delhi Poetree, and at Mumbai for Cappucino Readings. She can be reached at https://www.pw.org/content/vinita_agrawal or at www.vinitawords.com