‘You must write the poems you must write’: Five from K Srilata’s new book of poetry

Three Women in a Single-Room House

I

Not-too-small, not-too-big,
this apartment with its balcony
on which our son can ride his tricycle,
its kitchen with no walls
so we can cook and still belong
to the rest of the house
is what I have sold my diamonds for –
thinking over the agent’s glibness
of my grandmother
who had bequeathed them to me.
They had once shone,
talisman-like, in the dark of that small room
where we three lay – she, my mother and I –
on the floor in a row,
three women used to small spaces.

II

My mother is sitting on the only bed
in the only room in the house
writing something.
When she is done,
I find an ink stain on the sheets.
One of them is an outstretched wing.

III

My grandmother is working her sewing machine
in a corner of the only room in the house.
She is making me a dress two sizes too large,
so you can grow into it, she says,
and when it is done,
go on, try it.

IV

It was never more than seven steps
from anywhere to the only window
in the single room house
and I would like to tell you
that the sky floated in through the slats,
filled us – my grandmother, my mother and I –
with spaciousness.
I would like to tell you
that we learnt to take up space,
The truth is
we just grew used to small spaces,
the three of us,
rough diamonds stuck
in mines that ran too deep
to catch the light.

Our Days Would Catch on the Cruelest Thorns

We placed our hopes on the first of the migratory birds.
They had arrived and so all was well and would be,
Seasons would proceed as they were meant to.
Girls would grow up, become women.

We didn’t know it then,
that the birds would find their way home,
that seasons would proceed as they were meant to
but our days, our days would catch on the cruellest thorns.

Having Come This Far

It is, for all of us,
the grief of the unspent life,
those coins in our purse
that remain small change,
the ride offered but not taken,
the unreturned gaze,
the train with one empty seat
that pulled out seconds ago
and the station master gloating,
“You missed it by a whisker”.

The things we miss by a whisker,
the lives we don’t live,
and now never will.

The Thing About Being an Older Woman is This

There is a certain knowing
that you find yourself carrying,
a kind of heavy knowing,
and then there’s the remembering
of how you were once a solid teak chair
that people paid no heed to
but sat on, always,
and the remembering
of how, every day, you drowned a little
and only managed to save yourself
by clutching at froth,
and how the froth helped
and you got yourself to a kind of shore
and were finally able to breathe –
short breaths, mind you, very short,
and the lines you started to write
were, at first, the gasps of dying fish
but then you found that poems didn’t have to be written
the way laundry had to be done,
the way children had to be raised,
but that you must write the poems you must write –
gently and with love for yourself,
you must release yourself into what awaits,
for until you do that,
the knowing is going to be heavy,
sand that has snuck into the hem of your skirt,
lint that has stuck to your soul
and won’t come off.

Excerpted with permission from Three Women in a Single-Room House, K Srilata, Sahitya Akademi.