Do I Have Another World? Poem by Srinivas Jegannathan

I wish I were a deer
Or else a peacock
If not a dolphin
I wish I were a rabbit
Or else a parrot
If not a penguin
I wish I were a rose
Or else a lotus
If not a jasmine
Or a butterfly
I wish all that and fly
But all of them wish to be me…
Yet for many here I’m sinamine
I can’t even stay in the womb- -
I’m flushed out as if I were a bomb
If I escape I’m subject to doom…
Merciless… throw me in maelstrom
To all the men who may be my groom
Read the epitaph in my tomb:
“Do I have another world?
Where all the birds, flowers, animals, men and my mom
Want me be to be a girl and not a worm! ”

© J. Srinivas, Mumbai, India