Pavana पवन.

I've been knocked on my ass by the work and words of Pavana पवन. Initially saw her words on Ayesha Siddiqi's Tumblr, I googled the name and didn't find very much. I followed the source link and found the original master-post, but I had assumed this was a published author, that these were words that were older, and an established part of the canon.

I'm just blown away. Check out Pavana's site, Maza-Dohta dot com.

“I believe pain breeds wolves
and joys give rise to moons.

We grow forests in our bones
so our memories can’t find us.
I believe we hide and haunt ourselves”

― Pavana पवन

This is almost the exact wording to express the tattoos on my body. 

“Since the age of nine, I have felt an unbearable heaviness in my soul, an unpronounceable ache for a different time and place. I feel for things that have nothing to do with me, for budding flowers caught in the rain, for petals lost to the wind. I know what the earth must feel like, the way it serves as both the coffin and the womb for new life. I feel its heavy, heavy weight of loss, as if with every passing year I am both ending and beginning. Perhaps this is what growing up is, and perhaps some of us must die, over and over, before we are born again. Since the age of nine, I have been buried beneath my soul, and I believe I am beginning to bud again, like a strange flower grown from its own decay. I am in bloom, I have always been in bloom, and I am now just learning my own name. ” 

— In Bloom || Pavana पवन

A testament to maturity, and feeling the immovability of womanhood. I can relate to the feeling of a certain certitude of self, but the deep wound I walk with, never leaves me.

“
I am half a moon
where I once held
a heart.

I am not
broken,
I am simply
coming back
to myself.
”
— Pavana पवन

It's the hope I hold - that that's my direction.

“
love yourself.
this is how
we become
lovers.
”
— Pavana पवन

I have my work cut out for me. 

“
‘What should I
look for in
a man?’ 

The woman in him.
Search for her.”
— Pavana पवन

The loves of my life are the friends I have, I have had, and I will make. There is no love like that of a woman. The selfless. The giving. The empathy. The nature of the feminine in its maternal roots. I am not a mother. I will never be a mother. I reject that role. But there are parts of me that have that unquestioned reactive caring. If we're gendered to have certain roles, certain strengths, certain values to be valued, the feminine is it.

“We age not by years, but by stories.” 

— Pavana पवन

A story can age you terribly. A light-hearted nature can keep you young. You're an old soul, they said. Maybe that's why I'm so tired.

Check out the words. No doubt better read without my reactions.