Newlyweds

In India the housewives kill themselves:
a crop of twenty thousand every year.
Some eat narcotics off their medicine shelves;
some hang themselves. Some, long past feeling fear,
self-immolate. Many are children still,
whose nightmares have become their daily life.
They hope to wake; they dream that if they kill
the nightmare self, they’ll wake as no one’s wife
but as young girls again: innocent feet
escaping from the bedsheets, sleepy eyes
adjusting to the light of dawn, the heat
of India when the sun has yet to rise.

—Cara Valle

Next
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

JD Vance States the Obvious About Ordo Amoris

James Orr

We are living, it scarcely needs saying, in unpredictable times. But no one could have imagined that…

Thinking Twice About Re-Enchantment

Peter J. Leithart

Since the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution, the story goes, we’ve lived more and more in a…

The Bible Throughout the Ages

Mark Bauerlein

The latest installment of an ongoing interview series with contributing editor Mark Bauerlein. Bruce Gordon joins in…