My Everything,
samodH Porawagamage | Poetry
Reading convinces me authors are puppeteered by history when writing about love. Why do they treat love as perfection worthy of gods? A crazy habit when in history fickle men attained one-
sided love because women fell knowingly to their charms! Vijaya used Kuveni to usurp power
and banish the natives. Seeta suffered a trial by fire to manifest her chastity to Rama who could. All those warriors tested the love of their beloved, and it is
have trusted her like a good husband
the woman who had to prove herself. Or die. | So many village women taking care of their
unlimbed soldiers while raising the children… makes me wonder if we descend from Unmada
Chitra, the only one who kept her brains when Deega Gamini left her with child. History books
erase her too the moment that son was born. This is why I have packed all my hate of historical
lovers into love for one real person, with a lot more to give.
Your True Beloved
samodH Porawagamage is the author of becoming sam (Burnside Review Press) and All the Salty Sand in Our Mouths (forthcoming from Airlie Press). He writes about the Sri Lankan Civil War, poverty & underdevelopment, colonial & imperial atrocities, and disproportionate impacts of climate change on rural & marginalized communities. “My Everything,” is from his manuscript Dear Soldier Husband, an imagined domestic epic that comprises sent, unsent, and crossed out postcards a soldier’s wife would write to her husband during the Sri Lankan Civil War.