The Friday Feature
Jannat Kamran - Like Salt
ISSN 3070-9865
Like Salt
They taught me silence before they taught me speech.
I was always a missing piece.
I never wanted to be a girl—
Frocks and ribbons were never enough.
I wanted to be a boy;
Maybe then they’d see me as more than a tube light.
I felt like a broken record.
I was dressed to please,
Unlike boys who did what they pleased.
I was taught to never raise my voice.
I was told to wait, to smile.
I was taught to swallow the anger,
To bury the pain in silence.
Like salt was I—
Needed in trace,
But never in taste.
Always enough
To season the space,
But never enough
To take up place.
From the Press:
At the core of this poem is the struggle between visibility and permission—who is allowed to take up space, and who is taught to make themselves smaller in order to survive.
The language used is spare and controlled, mirroring the emotional discipline imposed on the body and voice. The silence represented here isn't merely personal; it's instructional, inherited, and reinforced.
What gives the poem its broader resonance is how this personal experience reaches outward, toward the lived realities of women across cultures and geographies. Without naming places or systems, the poem situates itself within a global continuum where femininity is often regulated, measured, and corrected.
The emotional truth Kamran reveals in the metaphor of salt crystallizes with devastating elegance. To be necessary but diluted, essential yet constrained, is to exist in a state of usefulness rather than full belonging—valued for what one provides, not for who one is.
About the Author:
Jannat Kamran is a Pakistani writer whose work explores the emotional architecture of womanhood, silence, and identity. Rooted in a blend of personal narrative and cultural contemplation, her poetry often examines the quiet violence's that shape gendered experience and the resilience that emerges through them.
Her writing is influenced by feminist thought, psychological depth, and the politics of the everyday, where the smallest suggestions, memories, and domestic gestures reveal larger structures of power.
Through lyrical minimalism and symbolic imagery, Jannat’s poems navigate the tension between vulnerability and resistance, giving voice to the unsaid, the unseen, and the often misunderstood inner lives of women.
She is currently developing her first poetry collection, a body of work that navigates the spectrum of human feeling, from girlhood to selfhood, from silence to articulation. Her writing aims to bridge the gap between the unsaid and the ignored patterns that shape our emotional landscapes. Jannat hopes her work offers readers both recognition and refuge.
She can be found on Instagram.
