the therapist places...

the therapist places

the doll in front of you

it is the size of girls

your uncles like touching

point to where his hands were

you point to the spot

between its legs the one

he fingered out of you

like a confession

how're you feeling

you pull the lump
in your throat out

with your teeth

                                                  and say fine

                                                  numb really

                                                                   - midweek sessions

                                                                        Poem by Rupi Kaur.

About the Author: Rupi Kaur is an artist, her passion is expression,expressions in form of poetry and prose,photography.Rupi Kaur is a writer and artist based in Toronto, Canada. With a focus on poetry, she released her first book of prose and poems in November 2014. Throughout her poetry, photography, illustrations, and creative direction she engages with themes of femininity, love, loss, trauma, and healing. When she is not writing or creating art, she is traveling internationally to perform her spoken word poetry, as well as hosting writing workshops.Kaur, 24, came from nowhere to sell 1.4 million copies of her first book, Milk and Honey. That is almost unheard of for a first-time writer, let alone a first-time poet. First self-published in 2014 and then by a publishing house the following year, the poetry collection became a New York Times bestseller.

About the Poem: The poem  is chosen from "Milk and Honey" which is a collection of poetry about love,loss,trauma,abuse,healing and femininity but it’s written in Kaur’s trademark short, simple verse – with her own illustrations acting as visual punctuations.

Analysis of the Poem: Memories are a tricky thing. There are several shades of memories. They say a good memory stays forever even if the people who created are no more with us. But same is the thing with bad memories. They tend to haunt us longer than we could have imagined.  The prose “Black Cat” by Edgar Alan Poe is about the guilt of a man of the sins he committed and how he tries to be liberated form it through pen and paper. The poem I chose is a contemporary one by Rupi Kaur. This one is about the memory of a girl, young girl who fell prey to sexual abuse and surely that is her worst nightmare, horrible memory.

Memories when are not very good needs to be unloaded and thus we have therapists, psychologist and clinical help that bring us back to a normal life. But does that help, always?  Some memories are deeper seated in our mind…

In the poem, a girl is been taken to a therapist where she is made to recall her past experience with her uncle, who touched her against her will to places not meant to be touched in other words harassed her physically. Along with sexual child-abuse, the other crime conducted by the person is severe mental abuse whose trauma remains with the victim for a lifetime. Such is the case here.The girl here is mentally affected, not to insanity but to an extent where she has learnt to be numb and suppress what she feels with a word of mouth "Fine".The therapist with medical means brings out the confession from her and we get to know about the inhuman thing that occurred in her life.

But does confession in these cases the solution? Memories of this kind still happen to make the girl go numb even when she says and also tries to be fine.

Memories are a dangerous thing.All the unwanted incidents that take place in our lives remain stored in our memories and they tend to never leave our back.... if even we are desperate to throw it away.