Saraswati is perturbed when the swami says 1 + 1 = 1

“More than 63 million women are ‘missing’ statistically across India, and more than 21 million girls are unwanted by their families, government officials say.” –The Guardian, January 30, 2018

“Between 2015 and 2020, India lost an average of about 3.6 lakh females to 'excess female deaths' and 5.9 lakh female children to pre-natal sex selection (missing females at birth) every year.” – Sravani Sarkar, The Week India Magazine, July 1, 2020

                            And denies      the problem                 of the girl
child. As if in this       one world, a boy = girl           or girl = boy,
an ardhanarishvara complete              in each one                  of us, a universe
              where human + human = human                    and all three
              bodies possess the same measure,                  the scale in perfect

                                                                                                                balance of whole

                                                                                                                & holy. He says: Western

                            reports are overblown, know not        the true

                                                                                    India, our daily praise

of goddesses –                                    in the home,                            in public,

              in silvers –                                          you must discount

                                                                    a pocketful of errants

                                                                                                  from real
                                                                                                                religion. You see

              faith can be blind

                                                        but ultrasounds are not.          Witness the not

                                          millions

here                 to challenge his accounting. Lament                          the black swan

                                                    you once cradled, barren
              river before harvest – our fields expelled
                                          of their seeds – butterflies spattering
                            wings as husked hail. At times a man
              can hold a goddess                  but not a girl’s hand. Born

                            a woman & of a woman, experience belies reality: you

always know you are more than this one – even when your fluid
has dried up, even when you scavenge eggs,                         aspire to generate

            a bloodline. You descend from society’s summed
                        expectations, migrate to unseen

rivers in order to find              freedom

                                    in your countless selves. In the perfect
              world, in absentia, you dance upon

a swan & mark infinity. When you visit goddesses in stunning bent
                            raptures upon temples, hips shooting everywhere, you wonder where

                                                                                                                                   the women

worshippers are collecting. You wonder if here 1 + 1
                                                                                             = 0, egg of the future              from a theory

                                    carrying all our possibilities,
                                                                 born of an equality

bearing too many                    impossibilities.

                            You account: there are            ones who never

return from becoming

one with the one, from erasing
their twinned selves.
                                                   You realize

                                          being is a perilous

arithmetic –

                            with the sleight of a scalpel or sum, you can make

              a body appear
              to disappear

even as you work to reckon                a common future                                 from zeros
                                          multiplying –                                      marking
figures you never learned,      birthing           unknowns, offering     bliss to the unsplit

              soul so that it will not

wake hungry, ache
the way your full         breasts
do when the    milk

has no one                   to fill.

Purvi Shah’s favorite art practices are sparkly eyeshadow, raucous laughter, and seeking justice. She won the inaugural SONY South Asian Social Service Excellence Award for her leadership fighting violence against women. Her book, Miracle Marks, explores women, the sacred, and gender & racial equity. With artist Anjali Deshmukh, she creates interactive art at https://circlefor.com/. Their participatory project, Missed Fortunes, documented pandemic rituals and experiences to create poetry and visual art and a community archive for healing. See the art prints at https://tiny.one/circlefor and discover more @PurviPoets.