WEBVTT

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[The following talk contains
descriptions of sexual violence

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[which may be triggering to survivors.]

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[Can you help me?]

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[Can you help change the world

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[with more meaningful questions?]

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[Question everything better.]

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(Reciting) It began as a typical Thursday:

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sunlight kissed my eyelids good morning.

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I remember climbing out of bed,

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making coffee to the sound
of children playing outside,

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putting music on,

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loading the dishwasher,

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putting roses in a vase
in the middle of the kitchen table.

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Only when my apartment was spotless
would I step into the bathtub,

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wash yesterday out of my hair,

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like the walls of my home were decorated

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with frames, bookshelves,
photos I'd decorate myself.

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Hang a necklace on my chest,
hook earrings in,

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apply lipstick like paint,
sweep my hair back.

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Just your typical Thursday.

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We ended up better
get together with friends.

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At the end, you asked
if I need a ride home and I said yes

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because our dads
work for the same company,

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and you'd been to my place
for dinner many times,

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but I should have known

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when you began to confuse
kind conversation with flirtation,

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when you told me to let my hair down,

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when instead of driving me home

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toward the bright intersection
of lights and life,

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you took a left
to the road that led nowhere.

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I asked where we were going,
you asked was I afraid,

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and that's when my voice
jumped over the edge of my throat,

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landed at the bottom of my belly
and hid for months.

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All the different parts in me
turned the lights off,

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shut the blinds, locked the doors,

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I hid at the back
of some upstairs closet of my mind

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while someone came and broke the windows.

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You, someone, kicked the front door in,

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you took everything,

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you, someone, took me.

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It was you who dove to me
with a fork and a knife,

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eyes glinting with starvation
like you hadn't eaten in weeks.

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I was 110 pounds of fresh meat

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you'd skin and gut with your fingers

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like you were scraping
the inside of a cantaloupe clean.

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I screamed for my mother
as you nail my wrist to the ground,

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turned my breast to bruised fruit.

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This home is empty now.

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No gas, no electricity, no running water.

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The food is rotten from head to foot.

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I am layered in dust;
fruit flies, webs, bugs.

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Someone call the plumber,

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the stomach is backed up,
I've been vomiting since!

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Call the electrician
these eyes won't light up.

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Call the cleaners
to wash me up and hang me to dry.

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When you broke into my home,
it never felt like mine again.

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I can't even let a lover in
without being sick.

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I lose sleep after the first date,
lose my appetite,

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become more bone and less skin,
forget to breathe.

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Every night, my bedroom
becomes a psych ward

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where panic attacks wake
men playing doctors to keep me calm.

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Every lover who touches me
ends up feeling like you.

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Their fingers - you, mouths - you,

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until they're not even the ones
on top of me anymore; it's you.

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And I am so tired
of doing things your way.

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It isn't working.

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I've spent years trying to figure out
how I could have stopped it.

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But the sun can't stop
the storm from coming,

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the tree can't stop the axe.

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I can't blame me for having
a hole the size of your manhood

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in my chest anymore.

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It's too heavy to carry your guilt.

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I'm setting it down.

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I'm tired of decorating
this place with your shame

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as if it belongs to me.

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It's too much to walk around
with what your hands have done

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if it's not my hands that have done it.

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The truth comes to me.

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Suddenly, after years of rain,
the truth comes

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like sunlight pouring
through that open window.

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It takes a long time to get here,
but it all comes full circle.

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It takes a broken, twisted person

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to come searching for meaning
between my legs,

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but it takes a whole, complete,
perfectly designed person to survive it.

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It takes monsters to steal souls
and fighters to reclaim them.

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This home is
what I came into this world with;

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was the first home, will be the last home.

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You can't take it.

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There is no space for you,

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no welcome mat, no extra bedrooms.

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I'm opening all the windows,
airing it out,

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putting roses in a vase
in the middle of that kitchen table,

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lighting a candle,

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loading the dishwasher with my thoughts
until they're spotless,

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and then, I plan to step into the bathtub,

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wash yesterday out of my hair,

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put music on, sit back, put my feet up,

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and enjoy this typical Thursday.

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(Applause)

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(Speaking) So when I first started
writing years ago,

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it was a private hobby,

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and then years after that,
it became a public one

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that I shared with
some family and some friends.

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And then years after that,
I began to share it with the Internet,

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and today, I'm lucky enough to say
that it's become my full-time job.

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So when I first started to travel

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to perform spoken word poetry
like you saw here today

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and to do readings
of my book "milk and honey,"

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family and friends always asked me,
"Don't you ever get homesick?"

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And on the plane rides to and from,
I ponder that question

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because the truth was
I never really got homesick.

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I mean, of course I'd lie to my mom
and tell her that I did,

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because what was I really going to say?

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"Hi, mom. Yeah. No.

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No, I'm actually completely fine,
I don't miss being home at all."

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Trust me, I did it once last year,

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and I am still hearing
about it a year later.

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But the truth was

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the fact that I never felt homesick
made me feel bad.

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"Was there something
wrong with me?", I thought.

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"Was I cold?"

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And after months of wondering,

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I realize that the reason
I never felt homesick

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was because, for me,
home was wherever I was.

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So let me explain.

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I'd moved over a dozen times
in my short life,

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so this concept that home
is some physical structure

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just stopped making sense a long time ago.

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How could I place the idea of home

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on places that kept on changing,
on temporary roofs?

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Houses were structures. Home was here.

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When I was three, home was
on that two-wheeler scooter

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rocketing around my village in Punjab.

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When my father left India as a refugee,

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he went to search for a home
in far-off countries

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while my mother tried to maintain
our crumbling one there.

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And years after that,

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mum and I found home

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on an airplane hurdling
towards a Canadian tarmac.

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And then,

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in the dozen plus moves
that followed that,

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the only constant I had
under each of those roofs

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was my art,

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it was my writing and my expression.

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So naturally, writing became like a limb.

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It became an extension of my being.

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So then, what happens

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when your home,
when your body is attacked?

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What happens, say, when you thrust

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something as dark as sexual abuse,

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molestation, a rape, onto a person?

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It makes you feel robbed
like you don't even own your body.

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They own it,
and you're living in it on rent.

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And this feeling
of homelessness within the body

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isn't restricted to only sexual violence.

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Domestic violence can make you feel
just as far away from yourself.

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Navigating this world
with a physical or a mental disability.

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That first treatment of chemotherapy

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will make you feel like
your body's turned on you,

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and you're living someplace foreign.

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The sensation of being trapped,

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being born into the wrong body altogether

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is terrifying.

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The boy or girl mercilessly bullied
at school and battered at home,

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the refugee, unwanted on the old shore

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and deemed
a scavenging vulture in the new.

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So many of us are trying
to reclaim our bodies from something.

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At my lowest point -

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this was right before I began
to take writing seriously

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and make it into an everyday practice -

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thoughts of ending my life were constant,

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and attempts weren't far off.

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I could not stand myself.

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I'd walk into the bathroom,
and I would seriously turn the lights off,

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I would shower in complete darkness,

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so I wouldn't have to stand there,
under the water,

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have to look down and see my body

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because this thing
had brought me so much pain

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that seeing it filled me with disgust.

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I honestly avoided mirrors
like one would avoid an ex at a party.

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I refused to acknowledge it,
look at it, appreciate it.

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I craved physical pain
to manage the emotional pain.

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And so I began to break the body down,

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refused to nurture it
with good food and good sleep,

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abused it through language
and vandalized it through self-harm.

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But there was one day,

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where I was crying upstairs in my room -

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and it was always Niagara Falls in my room
at that point in my life -

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but this day was different.

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This day the tears suddenly stopped,
it was like the taps went dry,

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and like a robot, I got up,

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I walked to the closet,
I found some charcoal,

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I found some paper,
and I sat, and I drew for hours.

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What I ended up with
was a picture of a woman,

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and in the corner of the page,
I'd written a poem.

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And little did I know
that sitting there in grade 10 or 11

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that this combination
of picture and poetry

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would one day lead

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to a New York Times
bestselling collection of poems.

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The writing was
a guttural response to my trauma.

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I wrote, and I wrote,
and I wrote, and I wrote

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with the intention to survive.

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The poetry in the books, all of that,
was just the side effect.

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And it was this writing
that led me to reclaim my body.

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You see, I come from
a tradition of poetry.

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Being raised in a Sikh household,

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every instance of my life from birth
has been informed by poetry.

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Sikh scriptures are written
in poetic verse.

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It was on the lips of my mother
as she rocked me to sleep,

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it was on the lips of her mother
whose own mother rocked her to sleep

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as they traveled an ox cart

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through the carnage and pillage
of the South Asian partition.

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The poetry is Punjabi,
and Persian, Braj, and Sanskrit.

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It is how millions
viewed life, in concert,

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constructed by the languages
of nomads, and warriors, and mystics.

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Even our names are picked from poems
written hundreds of years ago.

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When I'll decide to marry,

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it will be poetry
that will bond that marriage.

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And even when I pass,

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it will be poetry
that will mark my departure.

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And so, it comes as no surprise, I think,

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that I would use writing poetry
as a means to reclaim this body,

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to find home here again.

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It was this writing of poetry

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that led me to find love for myself,

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and with that love, a path lit up.

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I took that love, walked back into myself,

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to that five-year-old girl,

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to that 10-15-year old girl who was
still sitting inside of me scared,

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the one who had no one.

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I walked over to her,

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picked her up, and told her
it was going to be OK.

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We all sat in this body that day,
joined together as one.

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And I said to all
the younger versions of me,

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I said, "You are welcome here.
You have always been welcome here.

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This place belongs to you.

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Nothing was your fault, and I love you."

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The truth comes after years of rain,

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the truth comes like sunlight
pouring through that open window.

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It takes a long time to get here,
but it all comes full circle.

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It takes a broken, twisted person

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to come searching for meaning
between my legs,

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but it takes a whole, complete,

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perfectly designed person to survive it.

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It takes monsters to steal souls
and fighters to reclaim them.

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This home is
what I came into this world with,

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it was the first home,
will be the last home.

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You can't take it.

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There is no space for you,

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no welcome mat, no extra bedrooms.

00:17:48.107 --> 00:17:52.107
I'm opening all the windows,
airing it out,

00:17:52.512 --> 00:17:56.512
putting roses in a vase
in the middle of that kitchen table,

00:17:56.997 --> 00:17:58.827
lighting a candle,

00:17:59.388 --> 00:18:04.077
loading the dishwasher with my thoughts
until they're spotless,

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and then, I plan to step
into that bathtub,

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wash yesterday out of my hair,

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decorate my body in gold,

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put music on, sit back, put my feet up,

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and enjoy this typical Thursday.

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(Applause)