Pallavi Padma-Uday is a writer and historian based in Belfast. Author of two poetry collections published by Writers Workshop, her writing –long form, poetry and memoir– has been published in various newspapers, literary journals and anthologies in India and the U.K. Padma-Uday was shortlisted for Art Council Ireland’s Literature Bursary in 2024. She is currently writing her third poetry collection and a non-fiction book.
Single Hands
All weekends I prepare for the weekdays
alone.
The loneliness has always existed
even when I didn’t know
as well as I do now, the charade of living,
the solitude of action. Am I unlovable?
I love too much but is it not enough?
Is it simply that I am too old? Or too young?
Maybe I am too fat, too slow, or simply cold
as the winter—pale and stark.
It’s been so long, this life chugging
on its own.
At the sink, like plates
singing, I have wanted to sing too.
God is in the small things, a hand at the stove
but who can bear it, the waiting game
as the milk froths-who wants it? I ask.
Stares, stares, I should not have asked.
The morning sprinkles like gold dust on the lawn.
It’s still cold but beautiful.
The house rises in infant cries and man socks
begging attention.
Is it insane to look at a day this beautiful
and feel alone –
at the sink, in the tub, near the stove
waiting on people to begin their day
Evidence
In a million ways I smoothen
creases all day scrubbing clean
the stains and spots from places
between spaces where Sundays rest
in tea-stained cups, cakes and shakes
and mud-plated skates. Surf and soap
are just chemicals, wait till you see
the deft of hand in cleaning plates,
as if it were the softest thing—
a baby’s face, a man’s heart—
a universe of love, circling
in spheres of moonlight.
Like the air, I touch
everything—the sky,
the soil, the blazing Sun.
Limitless as the galaxy, cloistered
like a cove, I live in cirque-like
openings–never letting out a sigh.
Women’s work
is poetry, everyone agrees perfectly
like perfect competition, you idealise
norms that make me incredibly divine,
Beannacht Dé. In that ordained halo, I’m
a song but you’ve written the lyrics. Art must
sell, you say, and my days become your script –
swirling and swirling in duties, I flit about in air;
my lungs flap, like a butterfly stung by wasps
in streams of ichor; I might need a ventilator –
the doctor has told you, but you have got the flu,
you innocent man. Your nose is bulbous like a joker
from all the sneezing; you need soups
and warm broths. The kitchen is breathing in vapours,
my chest in bloody clots, just for you.
The Galway Review 