The Village of Sewn Mouths
Photo: Karan Madhok
Poem: ‘They say the river hums here, / but no one sings along. / In this village, silence grows / like moss on every wall.’
They say the river hums here,
but no one sings along.
In this village, silence grows
like moss on every wall.
Girls are born with laughter,
with the warm spill of song
but by the seventh dawn,
the needles are prepared.
The grandmothers thread them first,
their hands steady as the moon.
No trembling, no rebellion
just the soft press of lips
meeting the sting of steel.
The thread is coarse,
dyed red from the hibiscus
that grows behind the shrine.
A red that stains,
a red that warns.
Mothers hold the daughters still,
their eyes turned to the ceiling beams
so they will not see
the shame stitched into their skin.
And once the lips are sealed,
the men sleep deeper,
the fields hum louder,
the air feels cleaner.
Only at night,
when the crickets fold their legs,
the women gather in the granary
their sewn mouths humming
through their throats,
a secret music
that vibrates against their teeth.
This is the only time
their songs escape,
rising through the grain dust,
soft enough not to wake the gods.
They hum of rivers unbound,
of tongues like kites
cutting through the wind,
of a day when thread burns
to ash in the hearth.
But come morning,
they return to their fields,
to their kitchens,
to their silent rows
the sun catching on the stitches
that bind them shut.
And the river keeps humming,
its voice low,
its waters restless.
***
Anju Devadas R D currently works as a Guest Faculty in the Department of English at Pondicherry University. A budding poet, her work has appeared in The Madras Courier, LittCrit, Feminism In India, and other journals and magazines. Her creative and critical writing moves between the personal and the cultural, drawing on confessional and feminist traditions. You can find her on Instagram: @unbearable_lightnessof_being and X: @anju_devadas.
