The Morning I Woke Looking Like Saint Wilgefortis, by K. Srilata

The Saint Wilgefortis Triptych, by Hieronymus Bosch (Netherlands) ca 1495-1505.

The Morning I Woke Looking Like Saint Wilgefortis

And even though I had never heard of her,
that morning I woke with a beard,
and the father I did not have said to me,
“No one will never marry you now,”
and the large family of aunts and uncles I had never had,
but dreamt up every single day, said to me,
“No one will ever marry you now,”
and my own self which rose and fell every single day,
didn’t know what to say to me at all, until one day,
the beard grew to my toes,
and caught in the toe-rings I had taken to wearing,
because they were pretty and I had got them dirt-cheap,
and it couldn’t hurt to wear them,
and a young art student who had just entered my life,
said to me with shining eyes,
“If only Bosch could see you now…”
which is when I google-found her,
beardless though, and nailed to a cross,
and of course, this only made things worse,
for when I woke the next morning,
after a long and unusually dreamless sleep,
there I was - nailed to the cross
of aunts and uncles I had never had,
but had dreamt up every single day.

​K. Srilata

A poet and fiction writer, K.Srilata is a Professor of English at IIT Madras. She has been a writer-in-residence at the University of Stirling, at Sangam house and at the Yeonhui Art Space in Seoul. Srilata’s books include four poetry collections - Bookmarking the Oasis. Writing Octopus, Arriving Shortly and Seablue Child, a novel Table for Four (Penguin), long listed in 2009 for the Man Asian literary prize,  three co-edited anthologies The Rapids of a Great River: The Penguin Book of Tamil Poetry, Short Fiction from South India (OUP) and All the Worlds Between: A Collaborative Poetry Project Between India and Ireland (Yoda). Srilata co-curates the CMI Arts Initiative and the CMI-Sangam House Writing Residency.