A Walk on Cake (Performative Poetry)

You curse my education.
"Gender Studies? It won't involve much.
You would have all the time in the world, right?
It's just a cake walk".

I listen.
Innumerable accounts of loss and pain and death and dearth
"Cake walk"

Sir, Ma'am, if years of my tears, my midnight sobs,
My teeth-jittering evenings,
My futile complaints
My marginalisation, my annihilation
Is walking on the cake,
Well then I might be.

If my sister's labour in a claustrophobic kitchen
Her sacrifice on harrowing nights
Her tendency to drink tears
To convince a family they married
A laughing clown
Is walking on the cake,
Then I might be.

But I hate to admit this
It has been a cake walk.
To undo the atrocities on my कौम
To fight, to write, to sigh through sleepless nights,
To hope to once give back
To the struggle that brought you and me here.
I love to walk this cake, if cake it is.