The Mother — Abnish Singh Chauhan

She sits
abandoned in her own home,
dripping like drops of liquid
from a crack in a tree.

She gazes into the void,
her eyes fixed
on the screen of her mind,
where blurred images unfold,
one by one,
from the awareness of
being a daughter
to becoming
the mother of three daughters.

She recollects—
when she came
to her husband’s home,
many visitors,
including some women,
who once never tired of
singing her praises,
now turn away,
wrinkling their noses.

And those
who had once blessed her,
gathered in that moment,
are now the ones
who wound her with taunts,
day after day,
for not bearing a son.

She suffocates,
her heart longs
for the breath of open air,
but her feet remain still,
so that somehow,
the fabric of her family life
doesn’t unravel,
and the spinning wheel
keeps turning.

***