Lace
Against delicate lace, a woman's fury unstitches love's demanding confinement.
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From ULR
Issue 6 – Freedom
How to stop crying
Breath held, desert sand rubs wounds, pain ceasing into one shoreless, tender pulse.
December 1, 2021
From a leaf in Paati’s diary, 4.12.1943
Learn to stop them mid-way
like pranayama,
hold them until they brim
but not over.
Grow flowers.
You will see how fragility
can yield tenderness,
each petal, the result
of a trigger.
Pile them
like unwanted linen
in crevices
you don’t want to reach
easily.
Draw inspiration
from women
in remote desert villages
who learn to make do
without water
and sand their used vessels.
Rub that sand into wounds
over and over and over again
till wound meets blood
meets hurt
to that one point
when all pain ceases
into one shoreless
pulse.
Note
Repeat for best rest results
Pick the method most appropriate for different times
📖
PART OF A COLLECTIONHow to stop crying and 2 other poems
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Shobhana Kumar
Shobhana Kumar has two collections of poetry: The Voices Never Stop (2012) and *Conditions Apply (2014), from Writers Workshop, Kolkata. Her work has been anthologised in journals and books of poetry and Japanese short forms. Her poem, ‘Just Married’ was selected and translated by Gulzar in his monumental work, A Poem a Day, published by HarperCollins, in 2020. She has authored six books of non- fiction covering biographies, corporate, industrial, and educational histories. Her short stories have been published or are forthcoming in a few anthologies. Kumar is Poetry Editor of Sonic Boom Journal and its imprint, Yavanika Press. She is co-curator at The Quarantine Train, a writing collective founded by Arjun Rajendran. Here, she is part of the team that envisions the collective’s long-term goal of building a nurturing, warm community for writers, aspiring and established. She also works in the spaces of corporate communication, branding and advertising, and education. Along with a group of friends, she runs Small Differences, an NGO that works with elderly, abandoned people, the transgender community and extremely vulnerable populations.