Songs of daughters
I had always refused to believe in ghosts. Someday light would focus on the windows just enough to leave my mind in its place. That’s when I would stop wondering. Fixated to one little spot, one little thing, one little person. Her gaze. Mama. Or Maman. Mami, Amma, Eomma, Mutter, Mother. The sameness of it all coming down at once as the glass would shatter. Uneven shards of glass indistinguishable from my thought.
Mummy would make this face. Like a hole dug out of a messy garden by kids who liked to do things forbidden by their parents. An adult would catch them and then they’d have to run away leaving it all behind. Uneven, blank, lonely, abandoned, waiting to be touched. That’s the face I’ve grown up seeing. That’s the face I’ve grown up resenting. To see it is to lose my mind. Things come back, the way they went. Boomerang. Her gaze, her eyes, her face used to come back to me in my dreams.
Every bottle of water I filled up in her presence couldn’t actually hold the water. The drops of water would leak away. From the moment I was born, she was teaching me all the ways I could forgive her. She was a good mother, as good as she could have been with all her loneliness. And I had always refused to believe in ghosts until I gave birth. The light focuses on the windows even today as I return the gaze to my daughter.
Appears in —
Divyanshi Dash
Divyanshi (she/her) believes in poetry as a prayer. Her poetry has been published in Stone of Madness Press, Art of Nothing Press, Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English and more. She enjoys baking, reading, journaling and dancing apart from writing. Find more of her work here.
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more from this issue —
I had always refused to believe in ghosts. Someday light would focus on the windows just enough to leave my mind in its place. That’s when I would stop wondering. Fixated to one little spot, one little thing, one little person. Her gaze. Mama. Or Maman. Mami, Amma, Eomma, Mutter, Mother. The sameness of it all coming down at once as the glass would shatter. Uneven shards of glass indistinguishable from my thought.
Mummy would make this face. Like a hole dug out of a messy garden by kids who liked to do things forbidden by their parents. An adult would catch them and then they’d have to run away leaving it all behind. Uneven, blank, lonely, abandoned, waiting to be touched. That’s the face I’ve grown up seeing. That’s the face I’ve grown up resenting. To see it is to lose my mind. Things come back, the way they went. Boomerang. Her gaze, her eyes, her face used to come back to me in my dreams.
Every bottle of water I filled up in her presence couldn’t actually hold the water. The drops of water would leak away. From the moment I was born, she was teaching me all the ways I could forgive her. She was a good mother, as good as she could have been with all her loneliness. And I had always refused to believe in ghosts until I gave birth. The light focuses on the windows even today as I return the gaze to my daughter.
Appears in —
Divyanshi Dash
Divyanshi (she/her) believes in poetry as a prayer. Her poetry has been published in Stone of Madness Press, Art of Nothing Press, Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English and more. She enjoys baking, reading, journaling and dancing apart from writing. Find more of her work here.
Enjoyed the writing? Share it and support the writer.
