She Inherits Silence

She inherits silence

the way others inherit gold—

passed down quietly,

wrapped in warnings,

stitched into bedtime stories:

Don’t go out late.

Lower your voice.

Adjust.

 

Her grandmother swallowed bruises

because FIRs were for men with power,

not women with honour to protect.

Her mother learnt to negotiate pain—

compromise dressed up as survival,

fear renamed family reputation.

 

In police stations,

her story waits in long queues—

between missing files

and questions that bruise again.

“What were you wearing?”

as if justice checks dress codes.

 

Equality is written in textbooks,

framed in offices,

quoted on special days—

but her body still remembers

what the law forgets to feel.

 

She is told she is empowered now,

because she works, earns, votes—

yet her safety is conditional,

her freedom revocable,

her pain always needing proof.

 

Still, she speaks.

Files FIRs.

Names violence without apology.

Refuses to carry silence forward.

 

She is the generation

that breaks inheritance—

not by forgetting trauma,

but by demanding a world

where daughters inherit dignity,

not fear.

 

Intergenerational trauma and gender-based violence are often normalised and quietly endured. Through my work in public health and palliative care, I repeatedly witness how women are taught to negotiate pain, protect family honour, and remain silent even in the face of systemic injustice.

 

She Inherits Silence was written as a response to these lived realities—where laws exist, yet empathy is missing, and where women are told they are empowered while their safety remains conditional. This poem is both a reflection of what has been inherited and a refusal to pass that silence forward.