my mother tells me by Vijaya

            
            My mother tells me how she never mourned enough on the death of her mother.
            
            So, I started mourning for her early-
            
            I started mourning for the both of us.
            
            I started mourning the loss of my mother’s mother
            
            and my own mother.
            
            But what if I die before my mother does?
            
            I have been on antidepressants from the last four hundred and sixty days
            
            which makes up for the 0.06 per cent of my life till date.
            
            Day after day,
            
            pink, yellow, white, bluepills
            
            dissolving inside my body,
            
            so that I don’t kill myself.
            
            So, I need to mourn more.
            
            I need to mourn three generations of women
            
            all connected by uteruses,
            
            by blood,
            
            by face- so much similarity that it saddens.
            
            My mother has started to look like her mother:
            
            tired and without hope.
            
            Whenever somebody tells me that I look like my mother,
            
            I feel tired and without hope.
            
            The veins in our six feet are too thin from walking:
            
            Rawalpindi to Ballia,
            
            Ballia to Gorakhpur,
            
            Gorakhpur to Vellore.
            
            Three thousand, four hundred and thirty-one kilometers
            
            but two of us
            
            are still walking.
            
            Walking towards salvation/ self-destruct.
            
            We walk away from -
            
            How many times do I tell you, Vijaya,
            
            all these family secrets will ruin your poetry?
            
            How many times do I tell you to not talk about your mother?