Excerpts: MY BODY IS NOT A VESSEL by Shamayita Sen
‘every passing moon screeching upon / every neighbourhood I inhabit is a reminder of // your absence’
The following poems are excerpted from Shamayita Sen’s latest poetry collection, My Body is Not a Vessel, published by Hawakal in December 2022.
Post-Myomectomy
I look into your eyes and nothing poetic happens. Conch shells, remnants of the sea, music to my ears, populate our mantle—as if, dead sea-creatures hold life, as wombs nurture palpable heartbeats. My body is not a vessel. I do not want to bear children, I tell myself, you, and the women I call ‘Mother.’
Five days post release, my sister sits on her bed, bleeding, snuggling the pain in her womb. Her womb, that is to bear futuristic male children, needed cleansing of fibroids. The medic on duty brought tentacles in a container for her family to see—as they bring new-borns wrapped in crochet blankets home.
I hear this over the telephone, look back at you, and wonder why I couldn’t think of anything to say that might relieve her of pain even momentarily.
*
On Birthing a Girl-child
I
My uncle wailed all night
grieving the birth of his girl-child.
So, they tried for another.
His firstborn is now
a medical practitioner.
II
Taking after her mother,
Maa went to work soon after birthing me.
They weren’t offered
long maternity leaves back then.
III
This tongue-twister
of a name that I have
acts as a cue to distrust
men who mis-pronounce it.
IV
Many of my cousins have birthed
daughters. Often, we celebrate
the baby’s monthly birth anniversary,
forgetting her mother’s labour,
and her father’s muffled sobs.
*
Rest
Some rainy evenings when
Kakoli turns up at our place with
her infectious smile to cook us dinner,
I wonder if she would rather prefer
to snuggle in her bed, curl up
around her child and rest.
*
Before the lighting of lamps,
we scrunch up on a bed
not-so-artistically placed
in a cramped-up room.
My body against yours is
a landscape with dimly lit
city houses, sometimes
awaiting caresses and rain,
sometimes clad
with a fresh coat of paint.
*
First Night in a New House
Tonight, the moon screams through
new-found neem branches. The one with
the olive curtains I gifted myself.
A pigeon, quite hostile
to her new neighbour, coops up in front,
but not on the porch of my balcony.
I’m home, and so is she.
Yet, every passing moon screeching upon
every neighbourhood I inhabit is a reminder of
your absence, of the emptiness I unload
from cartons, and of the homes
we couldn’t build together.
***
Shamayita Sen is a Delhi-based author and PhD research scholar (Department of English, University of Delhi). Her third book, My Body is Not a Vessel (poems), was released by Hawakal in December 2022. She's the National Vice President of Literary Arts Council, WICCI. She can be reached at: shamayita.sen@gmail.com and on Instagram: @shamayita_sen.
