The woman who cast no shadow
My mother said she woke up one day
And decided to get married. It has been a
Quarter-century since. But the birds—
That started a couple of years in.
They would launch themselves with the confidence
Of married men at her chained breast, and
Hit, slide down, only beaten in their confusion
By my mother who was rattled, window-like,
Shattered, pane-like. And the wind,
Heavens, the wind, she said. It wriggled in,
Glacial in her hollows, and then blowing
A hole, bellowed through: now gales crash gutturally,
So that when I hold my ear to her mouth I hear
Conch-shell roars, a prisoner with a plate
Grating walls. By then it was also the
People, she said, and among the people the
Husband who walked through her once and
Feeling a draught, drew the curtains…
As for me, I outgrew this bedtime story,
like, years ago, but now when slowly,
I sit up with the sea rushing inside my concave
chest, I see my mother, her outline shimmering
where it meets the world, fading into it so
I couldn’t tell them apart sometimes—
and only briefly forgetting, I understand.
Akhila Pingali is a research scholar and freelance translator based in Hyderabad, India. Her work has appeared in SoFloPoJo, trampset, Defunkt Magazine, boats against the current, Tint Journal, Contemporary Literary Review India, etc. You can find her on Twitter @AkhilaPingali.