By Prerna Bakshi
When did you get those shiny big earrings?
When I got married.
When did you get those colorful bangles?
When I got married.
And that partially used sindoor (vermilion) case?
When I got married.
And those plain white sarees, when did you get those?
I didn’t choose them. They were given to me. By everyone else.
When I became a widow.
Originally published in Postcolonial Text
Prerna Bakshi is a sociolinguist, writer and interpreter of Indian origin, presently based in Macao. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work has been published widely, most recently in Red Wedge Magazine, Off the Coast, Yellow Chair Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, Kabul Press, Peril magazine: Asian-Australian Arts & Culture and Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature, as well as anthologized in several collections. Her full-length poetry collection, Burnt Rotis, With Love, which was recently long-listed for the Erbacce-Press Poetry Award in the UK, is forthcoming from Les Éditions du Zaporogue (Denmark) later this year. She can be found on Twitter.
Photo: (source)
Editor: Alicia Wozniak
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