poetry by Yena Sharma Purmasir

OLD MAID

If I never get married, who will
beat me / resent me / interrupt
my dreams with a laundry list
of chores?

I must be my own Cinderella girl,
clean the kitchen until
I can see my face shine
in that stainless steel cavity.

My house is empty, my body
too. Where are the children
to break my irreplaceable vase?

I’m the witch. I transform art
to wreckage to garbage. I step
on a piece of glass. My foot
is a glass slipper.

There is no after. I grow old
like a tree. No one cuts me down.
I carry my fruit until I can’t bear it.

Then they fall. Then I think of science.
Then I think of God.

For every action, there is an equal
and opposite reaction. For every life,
there is an equal and opposite life.

Yena Sharma Purmasir (she/her) is a poet and essayist from New York City. She is the author of Until I Learned What It Meant (Where Are You Press, 2013), When I’m Not There (self-published, 2016), OUR SYNONYMS: An Epic (Party Trick Press, 2022), and VIRAHA (Game Over Books, 2022). In 2020, she earned a master’s degree in theological studies from Harvard Divinity School, where she focused on South Asian religious traditions. As the former Queens Teen Poet Laureate (2010-2011) and a lifelong New York snob, Yena now ironically and happily lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. You can find her online and walking along the Charles River.