Postcard #6
Poems from To Punani Camp (this is a revisionist domestic epic in sent, unsent, and crossed out postcards a soldier’s wife would write to her husband during the Sri Lankan Civil War. It’s also an exercise in capturing the rural Sinhala idiom in English)
Writing postcards has become my religion since you returned home without your smile. I’m not selfish to want the whole of you intact after the wretched war, but the part that’s missing with your boyish smile is impossible for me to let go. That you can be my Hasi with me, yet can’t look straight at our Nidhuk is no relief for a mother. Day and night, I drown in the nightmares of the collapsed dam that is your bowed head. As a kema, I will burn this postcard with tomorrow’s pile of dry leaves for the smoke to carry our silent suffering into the faraway skies. Fire heralds in new beginnings and the gunfire ruins everything. Since the ashes of this fire can poison the soil, I shouldn’t burn it in the ash pit.
- A kema is a traditional healing practice.