Remember the bird nest in the Atteriya bush I wrote you about? The sparrow mother was feeding her little ones when I swept the garden this morning. She once even fed the father. Today must be the bird Avurudu Day. What wouldn’t I do to watch that moment with you! The way the sparrow mother relished feeding her family—my heart shook. Is it always Avurudu for her because she is with her whole family?
Maybe it was nothing special. Avurudu or not, women have to feed their small ones every day. Imagine her young wings snuggling in the nest amid the scent of Atteriya flowers and waking up every morning to their parents’ song! This is the life I want for Niduk, so I took a few flowers inside the house. Your mother started sneezing, and I quietly took them out before she could notice.
Your Wings
Note: This prose poem is from To Punani Camp, a manuscript-in-progress that is designed to be 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 and feminizing it.