Nani, Ma and I by Srina Bose (14, India)

I scrape at the dinner table wood, 
Each scrape, a generation torn out. 
Pa lies on the creaking diwan, 
He has sacrificed more than I notice, 
He loves Ma more than he shows, 
Marriage is stronger than it is showed. ​

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In front of me lie three generations of women, 
The sadness never seems to go. 
It is in the wrinkles of my Nani, 
The way I hear her crying on the phone with Ma. 
And she firmly tells me: leave. 
It’s in the way Ma holds her hand, and they mourn.
They mourn a dead father, a dead husband, and a dead star. 
They miss, grieve and cry—all together. 

And the sadness never seems to go. 

The wedding albums are the same, 
They wear the same nighties, 
They fall apart the same. 
My ability to break and cry and break and cry, comes from them, I think, 
How I can mourn to music, 
And pray to silence. 
I think the sadness runs in our veins. 

Pa flips his newspaper, 
I dig my nails into the wood, 
And on the walls of this broken home, I bleed out this poem, 
And before me lie three generations of women, 
Yet the sadness never seems to go.​