The body’s
tally count
says eleven
years.
Remember
but shhhhh.
Learn how to
fight back,
how to maintain
a chokehold.
We’re on offense,
not defense,
now.
I count the dollars
I earned
when I learned
how to comfort
crying men
for a living.
“The revolution will
not be funded,” I
whisper into the
savings box that
holds folded
20’s.
We love war
analogies,
anything to let us
keep playing victim
when our hands are
the bloodiest.
Yet I still dream
of murder
like it’s the
only way
to become
free.
Shaina Nanavati (they/them) is a writer from California. Their poetry focuses on themes of pining, sex, climate change, and violence. They are recharged by frequent heartbreak and sunsets over the Pacific. For fun, they like to spend hours imagining fights where they always get the last word. Previously, their work has been published in Into the Hamper: a BIPOC anthology. Shaina’s favorite revenge story is Island of a Thousand Mirrors by Nayomi Munaweera, a novel about the intertwined fates of two women trying to survive the Sri Lankan civil war.
