Kintsugi
Illustration by Emmen.
For Gloria Anzaldua
“she has this fear that she has no names that she has many names that she doesn't know her names.... she has this fear that if she takes off her clothes shoves her brain aside peels off her skin... strips the flesh from the bone ... that when she does reach herself... she won't find anyone ... she has this fear that she won't find the way back.”
break
the search continues for the soul-woman within me that does not exist for the colonial forces of Man and History
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there is me
carrying the oppressed.
there is me
passing through gallis
in delhi, mouth
contorted.
there is me
stuck in between
her and her.
there is me
as anti. a panacea
of a girl against
the raging of the world.
there is me
in germination, sun
flower struggling to
find its mother
amid the borders
of air and earth:
that stasis
before the bud
cracks its head
open onto the soil
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“if the self is being oppressed, then she can feel its limits, its capacity for response, pushed in, constrained, denied. but she can also push back.”
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muscling and clamoring in between the borders of the body, is the soul-self. like a trapped snake, scales glowing left and right in the blaring sun. look. look at all the beautiful colors, it makes in the light.
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what a difficult, scary
place to be, at the cliff
of your self.
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i recognize that the possibility of resistance depends on the creation of a new identity, a new world of sense, among the borders.
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am i vamika or vamika with an s: plural
many girls at once
a mouth through
that mirror, curling
hair in the next, breast
blooming out of the glass
below, refracted
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there is always the fear that i will remain at mercy to the borders of my body forever. but anzaldua says that “the soul uses everything to further its own making.” i desperately want to believe her, so desperately.
break
o my heart
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so i quiet myself, to let the loud thrum within. my body is a drum. beating, beating, beating. look at my life. i look at it. here. nothing can touch me but me.
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the serpent’s mouth is associated with womanhood, which was guarded by rows of dangerous teeth. it is a symbol of the dark, the sexual drive, the divine feminine, the serpentine movement of sexuality, the creativity, and the basis of all energy and life.
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what if i am
defined by
all the places
cut into me?
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in hinduism, the goddess durga or kali is the representative of the divine feminine, known for her ferocity and capacity to fight negative forces. one of the few goddesses not always attached to or seen with a male consort. she is depicted as riding a tiger and has several arms carrying different weapons for destroying the evils she encounters. at the same time, she is a paragon of transforming negative energy into love, creative harmony and passion
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who am i
praying to?
who?
who are you?
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using spirituality to reach the woman within, the woman growing at the borderlands of the body, is a growing practice among women of color across the world. in afro latin, west african, african american and caribbean communities, the goddess oshun is one representative of this energy. lately i’ve been fascinated in learning about her history and the lessons she can provide women like me in a tumultuous world. to help the soul grow and be nurtured. with the colonial pressures of Man and History interfering as little as possible in the process.
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my therapist tucks me in
back to the past
my body folded over
like newspaper crumpled
up into the size
of a womb.
she teaches me
how to make me.
how i have made me
all this time.
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perhaps this is what is meant by the soul’s calling: whatever activity or job or form of creation that the woman of color can find a “room of her own” in to combat the destructive forces at play on her body. by channeling them into a creative medium. soul-woman
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sometimes i think that suffering is intrinsic to us (some evidence of my failed buddhism) and that loneliness, which is a form of suffering, is intrinsic to our bodies. the way we deal with it is through bonding. we share stories of how we have suffered to feel closer and less alone. we try to love each other to make things bearable. because the only alternative to escaping something so intrinsic to our bodies is to break our bodies themselves, and to accept that breakage, and never try to fix it.
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i fill my cracks with writing and stories. i accept the narratives that have broken me, and write through them to regain a sense of agency on how i choose to let them scar me. i fill the scars in with gold when i write my story and share it with another human being.
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in japan, there is an art form called kintsugi (金継ぎ), which involves repairing broken pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with gold. when a bowl, teapot or vase shatters, the shards are put back together again, with the cracks set in gold. the practice highlights the vessel’s ‘scars’, its little histories of what happened to it, while adding value to the object. as every vessel shatters randomly and differently, the repaired piece becomes newly unique. kintsugi as a philosophy treats breakages as reflections of an object’s past and as potential for transformation and beauty, rather than something to disguise.
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meet me where the borders dwell
meet me where the flowers swell
like gold into the cuts
the lands make.
meet me. meet
me, there. ◆
Vamika Sinha is a poet, photographer and journalist from India and Botswana, currently based in Dubai. She holds a B.A in Literature & Creative Writing from NYU Abu Dhabi and is the founding editor of Postscript Magazine. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter: @vamika_s or visit her website.