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six hundred and eighty: 2023

so the weekend i saw yuan and had so much fun in SF, was the last weekend cory was alive. that’s when i wore this outfit, which i remember thinking i’d capture in a picture and post here. but then everything changed. that was the weekend of october 7th. so when cory died peacefully in his home, thousands of palestinians were being killed in theirs. they still are. what a bizarre, sick time. a time not to celebrate, but to grieve and lament and witness.

2023 has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year—and i mean that sincerely, but i also don’t. there were good things too. not just the shiny, post-to-the-gram things like promotions and vacations, but ordinary good things we learn to take for granted.

i saw the sun rise again and again. i ate good food, some of which i cooked. i got to see a lot of the people i love in person. i talked to some of them on the phone. i read more books this year than i read in the previous two years combined. i listened to great music and watched great (and terrible) movies.

there were some moments where i felt, surprisingly, like it would all be okay. this incredible lightness that must be love, god, whatever. i want to bottle that feeling and drink it like water, like my entire life depends on it. i think it does.

in january, i went on a handful of first dates with men and women. that's when i met E, and at first it was great. by march, when i got my first wisdom tooth extracted, i noticed her distance. but it was fleeting, only when she had guests from out of town, or when she went out of town, when work piled up, when life was happening, so i ignored it. by may, we were exclusive, which i largely orchestrated and i thought i'd feel better by then. i didn't. i flinched when my phone would buzz. i wanted to hear from her and also never hear from her. by july, i had everyone i love telling me to end things. so i did. baby's first initiated break up. it was a clean break. i felt good and strong and also foolish. i remember my hands shook the day after and i was so out of it, that i had a small accident.

i turned 31 this year, but i was 30 when this all happened and i hated it. i hated how small i felt, lonely, like i needed to ask for less. here were the things i asked for: to text me more than every 3 or 5 or 8 days. that was it. if you have to ask for that, it's probably not going to work anyway.

also in february, i got covid for the second time and got glass in my eye and had to go to the ER and then it was all okay. but that's how delicate the body is. i did a reading for valentine's day, my first of the year!

in march, i went home for amit's birthday. and also in march, i saw VIRAHA at the harvard bookstore. people were buying the books, what a joy!

in april, i wrote more and also not enough.

in may, my mom came to boston for mother's day and then i went to austin for a work trip. at this point, there was something wrong with my hearing and i got it resolved in October.

in june, i did my first in-person reading in YEARS at the cantab poetry lounge via the boston poetry slam. my mom was there and tanner was there and disha and annie and it was such an incredible feeling, i wish i could share it with you all. i felt so present and grateful for my life. to read my poems and have people listen with rapt attention. that's magic.

in july, yes that break up but also i went outside a lot and had long talks with the people i love.

in august, tanner and i went to utah and that was such a strange joy, to see that part of the country. right after, i went home to see my people who i hadn't seen since march. liz and vivian and max.

in september i turned 31, a magical day that i made possible that tanner attended without complaint. and then right after, the death of a friend's parent, i was back in new york. that was the last time i saw cory. i started therapy a few weeks later, for my OCD and depression and generalized anxiety.

in october, yes i saw yuan in SF and then i saw her again when i went home when cory died. and we all sat in the living room that was once his.

in november, my mom turned 69 and we had a great time celebrating despite all our grief. and then michael came over to build some ikea furniture, which i'm sharing here because it's so nice! who does that? we had thanksgiving and it felt both good and empty. when i came back to boston, tanner and i had to stay in a hotel because of carbon monoxide issues at our place. and then—

december, where i went to mexico with my team for our retreat and then i came home and the carbon monoxide was resolved. and tanner and i had some fun there, before we came down to new york for christmas with my family and he met vivian, liz, max. we did all the new york city things and it seemed to lighten everyone's spirits—which were down, because man this year! then he went back home and before i could join him, there was a mystery not covid, apparently the flu illness that took over my family. so now i'm writing this on the acela back to boston. i'll get in before 2023 bows out.

i have no idea who is still reading this, but if you are: thank you. if you're future me, hello from the past. i hope 2024 is full of joy, love, light, easy wins. less death, less aching, less pain. it feels like a good year, like the moment before something wonderful happens in a movie and everyone, even the characters on screen, is holding their breath—with hope

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six hundred and seventy nine: 2022

i didn’t know if i wanted to write this—and i didn’t know if i could write this. that’s the metaphor for 2022. one must imagine sisyphus happy. i don’t know if i was happy this year. if i’m honest, i spent a lot of this year feeling lost, overwhelmed, very out of control. i started sleeping with my laptop again, some show blaring me to sleep. at one point, i couldn’t sleep. it took five days for me to become so exhausted that i finally, finally passed out.

i guess the point is, i did eventually sleep. it’s that way with everything. that’s the good news. listen, in january, my heart was crushed again. it didn’t feel like a blessing, but it was. last year, when the clock struck midnight, i was praying a text message would appear. i hate what i’m like when a man is disappointing me. i know i should feel more rage, but really i feel terror. so when it ended, on the coldest weekend of old january, i sobbed, i starved, i survived. it was over.

i didn’t have sex at all this year. i did go to the doctor. i cried at the doctor’s. i went to the dentist. i cried outside the dentist, for my terrible teeth, that became glorious teeth. my dentist tells me i have beautiful teeth and i know it’s true.

i saw my family more this year. my mother and brother and cory. they are everything to me. i can’t believe all the times i take them for granted. we’re all so mortal. i thought so much about endings this year, and how even when i’m exhausted, hopeless, scared, i don’t want it to. i don’t want things to end.

i traveled to los angeles, costa rica, philadelphia. all those plane rides. i used to be so scared of flying. i used to look out the window and think what if we fall? it’s silly because we don’t. we never do.

the biggest thing of my year was the release of two new books. two books in two years was tough, incredible, a fucking joy. for so long, i just wanted to write these books, these different, hard, haunting poems. and then when i did, i wanted them to get published. i wanted people to read them. i can hardly believe it happened, that they both made their way into the world in the same year. OUR SYNONYMS: An Epic came out in july, and just this month, VIRAHA, was released. 

there’s less than half an hour until 2023, so i just want to say that i hope next year is better. i hope i’m better too. that i feel better, do better, live better. whoever you are, wherever you are reading this, thank you for spending any time at all with me in this space. it is still one of my favorite places, this corner of the internet. it brings me great peace, and i hope you have that. and, if you ever lose it, i hope you find it again, in spades.

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my poetry new book, VIRAHA, released today!

VIRAHA is a collection birthed out of a space of enduring loneliness, a celebration for the hope of life, that never stays dead for long. These poems repurpose and invent mythologies, situating human fragility and resilience as part of the natural world: every broken heart, lost love, failed dream is as ordinary and bewildering as the sunrise, as a bird in the sky. This is a book about the hard work of continuing. 

i wrote the bulk of this book during the first year of the pandemic. it’s the book i’ve always wanted to write and i’m so proud of these poems, that feel so much like my true writer’s voice.

get your copy of VIRAHA here today!

and i’m actually doing a virtual reading TONIGHT (december 13th) at 7:30pm EST with the incredible Lyd Havens (aka @heartmagician) and i would love to see you there—you can check out the event details here!

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my new book, Our Synonyms: An Epic comes out tomorrow!

to celebrate, Party Trick Press is hosting an EPIC lil virtual book launch party! join us at 8pm EDT on wednesday, july 20th for religious retellings and feminine rage

tickets are free, but you have to register to attend! i hope you’ll be there, i owe so much of my writing life to you all

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Just wanted to let you know that I stumbled on your writing in "the mermaid's voice returns in this one" and I can't wait to read more. Thank you so much for your contributions (I can't believe you're on Tumblr, we never get well-known people here). I hope you're doing okay!

wow, it means so much to me to get this message & to be considered "well-known"! tumblr was where i got my start, in so many ways, & i'm deeply grateful that @amandalovelace included my poem in their collection. thank you for reading & reaching out! i hope you're doing okay, too <3

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six hundred and seventy nine: cell phone meditation

While waiting for my new iPhone to be restored to a backup of my old iPhone, I have found peace. I mean it sincerely. I can’t use my phone right now, not the glittering new one with the many camera lenses, or the old one with the scratched up phone case. There is no one to call. No one to text. I have watched four episodes of something on Netflix that was good and I know it because I cried. I always cry. I love that about myself, my older self. I wish it for my younger self, who swallowed down the lump in her throat. That girl wanted to be brave. When I was a kid, I stayed home alone and this was back before the Internet was a social place. It was just me and my father’s old desktops and laptops and legal pads. I did my best underage writing on those legal pads. I practiced my penmanship like I was on my way to becoming someone important. The world was quiet those afternoons, once I watched enough television and ate all the snacks and sorted through my homework sheets. There was just me. It wasn’t scary. I wasn’t afraid of my shadow or the noises from the neighbors upstairs. Everything was possible and good and right. Today feels like that day. After I got nervous and angry and tired, after the insipid work drama, after the McDonald’s meal that I ate on the floor of my bedroom: I pay for this bedroom. I pay for this apartment. I work my mind off and I so take it for granted. Now there is just peace. The phone will back up and I will try again and again and again. My old phone inside my new phone. The messages from 2012. I miss that girl, who was afraid of the dentist. I want to tell her: one day you’ll get a root canal all by yourself! What would she want to tell me? What is it that I used to know? I forget.

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six hundred and seventy eight: 2021

I woke up this morning, in my dark bed cave, and went through a series of thoughts. Mostly anxieties. And then this sliver: I have to write about this year, 2021, when so much happened: how I transitioned from part-time work to full-time work, from a copy writer to a copy editor; how I moved out of my old house in Somerville, where there was a porch and a sun room and a living room so big it impressed everyone and a revolving door of people, some I loved, really loved, and others—it was the year that someone didn’t give me grace and moved out; how I moved into an apartment in the heart of Allston, with all the restaurants and cafes and convenience stores that stay open past midnight, with my best friend in this city, and how there is now someone there, here, snoring in the next room, asking me what I want for dinner, part of my noise and my quiet and how it was earlier this year that I thought that I would be better off alone, and now that sounds like the stupidest thing I could ever want;

how I wrote and wrote and wrote this year and submitted and heard no enough times that I started to feel like it was this impossible thing; and how two of my manuscripts were accepted for publication by two different presses and how I have to sit with that news even now, weeks later, because it feels like such a fucking dream and how I am sure this is not the dream; 

how I saw my family more this year than I did the last year and how that time was still so transient and how I’m so human I took parts of it for granted and how I wish I never take any of it for granted and how I wish there’s always some human, happy, healthy part of me that is able to take something for granted; 

how I took myself to the dentist and the dentist was kind and my teeth are not irreparable and how this isn’t a big deal to anyone else but a big deal to my younger self, who was so scared; 

how my dating life, wow my dating life—how there was hope and the vague outline of joy and a moment of peace and nights of uncertainty and crippling loneliness and how there were my friends, who called me and walked avenues with me and listened to me and showed me real love, the kind of love that makes me want to fall down to my knees and thank god, that these people are my people;

how it got better and got worse and stayed the same and I thought at various points This is the end and then I can’t give up; how I am someone’s favorite person, and how lucky I am, to know that deep down;

and how a few days ago, my roommate said 2022 is going to be a good year and I thought yes; how there is hope, even now, for a better future.

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six hundred and seventy seven: TWO BOOKS IN 2022

i'm so excited to announce that i have TWO books of poetry coming out in 2022!! OUR SYNONYMS: An Epic will be published by Party Trick Press! REVIVAL will be published by Game Over Books!

i started writing OUR SYNONYMS: An Epic in march 2020, while i was finishing up my last semester at @harvarddivinityschool​, exploring themes of anger and forgiveness through the women in religious mythologies in judeo-christian, hindu, and buddhist traditions. this book means so much to me, because it bridges together my expertise as a religious studies scholar with my love for language. i’m deeply grateful that natahna and megan believe in this work, that is so experimental and subversive. 

i started writing REVIVAL in april 2021, when the poems for national poetry month felt like a narrative. sure, there are some older poems in there, but the meat, the biggest chunks came out of a space of enduring loneliness, a celebration for the hope of life, that doesn’t ever stay dead for long. i wanted to die and i didn’t. i’m glad i didn’t. there are not enough words. there is not enough time. i can't believe this is my life. i’m so thankful that this work found a home at game over books. 

in my heart, i’m still just a kid from queens, writing in my construction-paper-covered notebook. so when i say i can’t believe that i’m the author of FOUR books, i mean that i didn’t think something like this could happen for someone like me. i’ve never attended a writing retreat. i don’t have an MFA. i don’t have an agent. i don’t have a big social media following. so much of my “journey” has felt like being repeatedly knocked in the teeth. and it hurt. and it made me want to give up the path that wasn’t working for me. and it made me write for myself and all the people like me. behind this profoundly lucky, celebratory news is the backdrop of my failures, my loneliness, my grief. more than anything, i wish i could share this news with my younger self. i owe that girl everything. 

thank you, you reading this, for being here and giving me the gift of your space and time. 

stay tuned for preorder details and if you want to keep up with me and all my literary happenings, please join my email list! 

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i love you writing. thank you

oh anon, i love you. thank you.

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I love men: their hands, the skin around their nails, how they crack their knuckles into me; when they make me coffee; how easily they can walk into the night & how they never let me walk into the night. Men who make me flinch-quiet-apologize, I love their earthquake laughter: when they tell me I’m funny. I’m a funny girl, giggling into her own punchline. Men who hurt me, leave me, lose me, ask me: how could you love me when you didn’t know me? Oh boy. How else?

— Yena Sharma Purmasir, “CRUSH ( of thirty)”

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A perfect morning, there is such a thing. Unslept, half a dream: you lean your whole body into mine; we melt like emerald green (your daffodil mouth) (my sapphire heart). Somewhere the color red is shaking. You are my primary. I close my eyes & there, in the dark, is a bright warm something. You break open my sky.

— Yena Sharma Purmasir, “YELLOW (twelve of thirty)”

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There is a cave inside me. I lived there for years. A man drove me to it. I feared his hand inside me & I wanted a hand inside me, to be a puppet girl made real. You don’t have to blame me, I blamed me. You don’t have to forgive me, I forgave me. My cave was good to me. I should be good to my cave, the sacred place that held me when I wouldn’t let anyone else hold me. But I resent my cave, the dark lonely space that ate into me. My cave became me. And it didn’t matter how kind someone else was, how gentle, how patient. When he touched me, how I trembled, how I came tumbling down.

— Yena Sharma Purmasir, “CAVEWOMAN (eleven of thirty)”

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I want to line up all the men I’ve loved in a row: look them in the eye, each one more like my father than the world ever let me be; measure their shoulders against my shoulders; ask them to fill the tiniest space in their crevice hearts for me; smell their nightmare morning breath; tell them I see their perfect faces on the passersby, always smiling / frowning / slack-jawed; trade in my forgiveness for their friendship; promise them I’ll be okay.

— Yena Sharma Purmasir, “FIBONACCI SEQUENCE (ten of thirty)”

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The past thinks it knows me. I used to be that person. My skeleton was good: a house with just enough natural light. There was an old soulmate who kissed me like no one ever kissed me. There was a time when no one kissed me. I was the unburied princess. Love saved me. Now into the future I run. I can’t see that far ahead but I promised I’d be there. The bridge of my heart is waiting for me to cross the world behind me: don’t turn around / miss / long there is more to life than love

— Yena Sharma Purmasir, “SPRINTER (nine of thirty)”

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I wanted to die & I didn’t. My little heart  kept kicking. I kicked down the door  of my mother. I was just a baby  & the whole world happened to me. Let me live in the country of its joy. The continent of my loss has pushed me  out to sea. I could have been a mermaid  but I wanted so badly to be real. I would  be real, but it hurts. This life is teaching me  something I didn’t want to learn.  Let me live in the dream of tomorrow.  I am digging my spirit out from the past as if I could be worth something. What if I’m worth something?

— Yena Sharma Purmasir, “LIFE LESSON (eight of thirty)”

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Come, I have a promise to break, a secret to share. My love is running the field & I am spilling his coffee down the drain. O, the riddle, riddle me this: you can’t imagine a heart without thinking of the fist. The fist of me has twisted. I am all guts, no courage. I would give up if I knew how to give. The god inside me is looking at you with tenderness. You only half-see her when I’m backpedaling. There in my shadow, is my body’s half miracle. I’m getting bigger. I’m stretching further & further away.

— Yena Sharma Purmasir, “SHADOWSELF (seven of thirty)”

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the world is so big & in this corner is the old love we had, at the market, on the shelf. not for sale, just for show. someone is watching. you are forgetting. i was the dream girl with the funny name. an open body. i was another country you could visit. & you didn’t. no post card. no itinerary. i’m giving up the thing i was holding on & thinking of your magic hands. you brought me to life. you let me go.

— Yena Sharma Purmasir, “DRAFT (six of thirty)”