Yena Sharma Purmasir is a poet and essayist from New York City. She was the Queens Teen Poet Laureate from 2010-2011. She is the author of Until I Learned What It Meant (Where Are You Press, 2013) and When I'm Not There (self-published, 2016), as well as co-author of [Dis]Connected Volume 1: Poems & Stories of Connection and Otherwise (Central Avenue Publishing, 2018). Our Synonyms: An Epic is her third book of poetry, published by Party Trick Press in 2022. Her fourth book of poetry, VIRAHA, is forthcoming from Game Over Books in December 2022. A Best of Net nominee, her work has also appeared in Mask Magazine, the Rising Phoenix Review, and Thought Catalog. She resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts and loves the Charles river. You can keep up with her on her website.
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earlier today, i posted a ‘2025 wrapped’ on linkedin. anyone who is still reading this, should be asking ‘why the hell is she posting on linkedin??’
well, i started writing on there in may. there was competition at work. the rules don’t matter now. what matters is that for a moment, i was in first place. then the moment changed. when the competition ended, i placed third.
i did win some money. and i know i did some good, interesting writing. but i also didn’t win exactly what i wanted to win.
that was the lesson of 2025.
this was the year in which i had no control. my job, the one i just alluded to, was out of my control. my apartment was out of my control. my relationship was out of my control.
control is important to me. i joke with my therapist, that my OCD is me trying to instill my will against chaos. i want to bring order to madness. that is my madness.
sometimes the madness isn’t even bad. sometimes the madness is neutral, or even good. but it’s not as i wanted it. it can feel like placing third.
apparently, this year i was in 16 unique cities. i was in 5 countries. i departed and arrived 43 times. i took 12 days off at work. i got 1 promotion. i officiated 2 weddings for dear friends. i attended 2 more wedding celebrations as a delighted guest. i wrote 33 poems. i published 10 poems in three magazines. i got 8 literary rejections. i got into 1 writing salon. i read 1 book. i watched 6 movies in theaters. i attended 49 sessions of therapy. i had 3 styes. i had 15 migraines. i went to the doctor 0 times. i cooked less than 10 times. i learned 1 life skill: swimming. i repaired 2 articles of clothing. i did 1 poetry reading in my hometown: queens, new york. i was on 1 panel at the massachusetts poetry festival. i took (and didn't delete) 5,884 pictures. i spent 50 days with my long distance partner. i missed 0 birthdays.
when i lay it all out like that, 2025 sounds glossy and shiny and wonderful. truly, i’m george bailey crying about my wonderful life. and it is wonderful—i know because when i was with my family over christmas, i had this thought like: please please please please let me do this again with these people. these are my people.
my life is wonderful because ‘my people’ is a group that grows, swells. my family is not just my mother and brother. my life is wonderful because i am in love and loved. my life is wonderful because i have people to miss and people i get to see.
but my life, like george—god what a hero—is tough. except i don’t know my mr. potter by name or sight. i feel like i am fighting some horrible systemic metaphor, who wants to see me fail or worse—submit.
today i was in edinburgh with suds. we walked up calton hill at sunrise. we’ve done a lot of trips together and this one was by far the one i was most excited for. he noticed. he teased me. i was like a little kid. up on the hill, looking over the city, i wanted to cry. i wish i could say exactly what i wanted to cry for.
i don’t think i’ll miss 2025. i’m glad to be rid of it, this time that made me feel so lost and small and alone and powerless and confused.
but i worry that one day, i’ll miss this terrible year. i’ll miss when the people i love were all here, there, a text or call or plane ride away.
to 2026 me, you, the beyond, whoever is reading this: i hope you can empathize but not understand. i hope the next truly terrible thing hasn’t happened yet. i hope we get more time together. i hope it’s good. i hope i’m good, not better.
it is december 31st and i am, for the first time ever, not at home. i mean, not the home in new york that i grew up with, that i feel in my bones, like an anchor: grounding and holding; not the home in boston, that i first begrudged and later loved, that i had to make myself and made specifically when the pandemic roared through the world—my safe place. no, i’m not at home. i’m in portugal with the man i love.
somehow, i’m 32 years old and still a girl. somehow, everything is calm. there is the ocean behind me, literally, the casual waves, everything churning back and forth. i’m flying back and forth, taking the train back and forth, changing back and forth.
the things i did this year that i intended to: i submitted my work more than ever, which meant i got rejected more than ever. but that one acceptance—sometimes there is a good thing that just needs to happen once. i made a waitlist three times, which means also i’m on the right path, that maybe, that potential to flip into yes. i performed more than i intended to, which feels like a gift from the literary gods, that i have something to say and the space to say it.
this year marked a whole year of attending therapy—and then some. the therapy i’m in, it’s like a mental workout. day in, day out; weeks in, weeks out. healing isn’t linear but you have to show up, you can’t give up. this was the year i didn’t give up.
i traveled more than i expected: boston to new york, to san francisco, to swarthmore, to italy, to the united kingdom, to mexico, to portugal. also to new jersey. let’s never forget new jersey.
when i think back on 2024, i’ll remember how many times i cried alone, shaking, and how many times i laughed with someone. that’s quite the divide, so of course, i cried with people too. this was the year i had to learn to trust, really trust. i bet that’s part of my life’s work. there are things, people i lost. battles. perhaps whole wars. and then, there was peace. real peace. joy. i thought i’d never be happy again, and then i was happy again.
the thing i am grappling with right now, is myself. who i was, who i am, who i could be. i don’t know. it all feels possible, until i make a choice. what i choose is also what i don’t choose. i am thinking of sylvia plath’s fig tree. i see my life brand out in millions of directions.
and then, i see my life as it is. i have to say that if nothing ever changes it, it is still so beautiful and so worthwhile. my life, that i sometimes diminish, with the laptop-lit evenings and chilly mornings, with the phone always chirping, with the depression and OCD and mammoth grief, this life that ripples like the ocean, full of everything, is my life. i have to love it. i mean, i can’t help it.
next year, which is already inching toward me, i hope is better. i hope i’m calmer. i hope i spend less time on my bedroom floor. i hope i think about death less. i hope to quiet the voice in my head that insists i shouldn’t be here, wherever i am. i hope to be good to the people i know and the people i don’t. i hope to finish the fifth book, to see it find its home, to cook and exercise and create and love and forgive. i hope to spend more time than i can dream possible with my people, my mom, my brother, tanner, suds, vivian, yuan, liz, max, lyndsay, everyone. i hope the good things that happen are bigger than i thought; and the bad things are smaller than i imagined. and for everything in-between, i hope the version of me who faces them, is kinder and smarter and exceedingly patient.
to anyone reading, future me included: i wish you well, i wish 2025 is tender and bright and full. like the moon—which is always full, no matter how we see it. (and tonight, the new moon, which makes it all possible, always, a cycle. time is just a cycle. it comes around.)
so the weekend i saw yuan and had so much fun in SF, was the last weekend cory was alive. that’s when i wore this outfit, which i remember thinking i’d capture in a picture and post here. but then everything changed. that was the weekend of october 7th. so when cory died peacefully in his home, thousands of palestinians were being killed in theirs. they still are. what a bizarre, sick time. a time not to celebrate, but to grieve and lament and witness.
2023 has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year—and i mean that sincerely, but i also don’t. there were good things too. not just the shiny, post-to-the-gram things like promotions and vacations, but ordinary good things we learn to take for granted.
i saw the sun rise again and again. i ate good food, some of which i cooked. i got to see a lot of the people i love in person. i talked to some of them on the phone. i read more books this year than i read in the previous two years combined. i listened to great music and watched great (and terrible) movies.
there were some moments where i felt, surprisingly, like it would all be okay. this incredible lightness that must be love, god, whatever. i want to bottle that feeling and drink it like water, like my entire life depends on it. i think it does.
in january, i went on a handful of first dates with men and women. that's when i met E, and at first it was great. by march, when i got my first wisdom tooth extracted, i noticed her distance. but it was fleeting, only when she had guests from out of town, or when she went out of town, when work piled up, when life was happening, so i ignored it. by may, we were exclusive, which i largely orchestrated and i thought i'd feel better by then. i didn't. i flinched when my phone would buzz. i wanted to hear from her and also never hear from her. by july, i had everyone i love telling me to end things. so i did. baby's first initiated break up. it was a clean break. i felt good and strong and also foolish. i remember my hands shook the day after and i was so out of it, that i had a small accident.
i turned 31 this year, but i was 30 when this all happened and i hated it. i hated how small i felt, lonely, like i needed to ask for less. here were the things i asked for: to text me more than every 3 or 5 or 8 days. that was it. if you have to ask for that, it's probably not going to work anyway.
also in february, i got covid for the second time and got glass in my eye and had to go to the ER and then it was all okay. but that's how delicate the body is. i did a reading for valentine's day, my first of the year!
in march, i went home for amit's birthday. and also in march, i saw VIRAHA at the harvard bookstore. people were buying the books, what a joy!
in april, i wrote more and also not enough.
in may, my mom came to boston for mother's day and then i went to austin for a work trip. at this point, there was something wrong with my hearing and i got it resolved in October.
in june, i did my first in-person reading in YEARS at the cantab poetry lounge via the boston poetry slam. my mom was there and tanner was there and disha and annie and it was such an incredible feeling, i wish i could share it with you all. i felt so present and grateful for my life. to read my poems and have people listen with rapt attention. that's magic.
in july, yes that break up but also i went outside a lot and had long talks with the people i love.
in august, tanner and i went to utah and that was such a strange joy, to see that part of the country. right after, i went home to see my people who i hadn't seen since march. liz and vivian and max.
in september i turned 31, a magical day that i made possible that tanner attended without complaint. and then right after, the death of a friend's parent, i was back in new york. that was the last time i saw cory. i started therapy a few weeks later, for my OCD and depression and generalized anxiety.
in october, yes i saw yuan in SF and then i saw her again when i went home when cory died. and we all sat in the living room that was once his.
in november, my mom turned 69 and we had a great time celebrating despite all our grief. and then michael came over to build some ikea furniture, which i'm sharing here because it's so nice! who does that? we had thanksgiving and it felt both good and empty. when i came back to boston, tanner and i had to stay in a hotel because of carbon monoxide issues at our place. and then—
december, where i went to mexico with my team for our retreat and then i came home and the carbon monoxide was resolved. and tanner and i had some fun there, before we came down to new york for christmas with my family and he met vivian, liz, max. we did all the new york city things and it seemed to lighten everyone's spirits—which were down, because man this year! then he went back home and before i could join him, there was a mystery not covid, apparently the flu illness that took over my family. so now i'm writing this on the acela back to boston. i'll get in before 2023 bows out.
i have no idea who is still reading this, but if you are: thank you. if you're future me, hello from the past. i hope 2024 is full of joy, love, light, easy wins. less death, less aching, less pain. it feels like a good year, like the moment before something wonderful happens in a movie and everyone, even the characters on screen, is holding their breath—with hope
i didn’t know if i wanted to write this—and i didn’t know if i could write this. that’s the metaphor for 2022. one must imagine sisyphus happy. i don’t know if i was happy this year. if i’m honest, i spent a lot of this year feeling lost, overwhelmed, very out of control. i started sleeping with my laptop again, some show blaring me to sleep. at one point, i couldn’t sleep. it took five days for me to become so exhausted that i finally, finally passed out.
i guess the point is, i did eventually sleep. it’s that way with everything. that’s the good news. listen, in january, my heart was crushed again. it didn’t feel like a blessing, but it was. last year, when the clock struck midnight, i was praying a text message would appear. i hate what i’m like when a man is disappointing me. i know i should feel more rage, but really i feel terror. so when it ended, on the coldest weekend of old january, i sobbed, i starved, i survived. it was over.
i didn’t have sex at all this year. i did go to the doctor. i cried at the doctor’s. i went to the dentist. i cried outside the dentist, for my terrible teeth, that became glorious teeth. my dentist tells me i have beautiful teeth and i know it’s true.
i saw my family more this year. my mother and brother and cory. they are everything to me. i can’t believe all the times i take them for granted. we’re all so mortal. i thought so much about endings this year, and how even when i’m exhausted, hopeless, scared, i don’t want it to. i don’t want things to end.
i traveled to los angeles, costa rica, philadelphia. all those plane rides. i used to be so scared of flying. i used to look out the window and think what if we fall? it’s silly because we don’t. we never do.
the biggest thing of my year was the release of two new books. two books in two years was tough, incredible, a fucking joy. for so long, i just wanted to write these books, these different, hard, haunting poems. and then when i did, i wanted them to get published. i wanted people to read them. i can hardly believe it happened, that they both made their way into the world in the same year. OUR SYNONYMS: An Epic came out in july, and just this month, VIRAHA, was released.
there’s less than half an hour until 2023, so i just want to say that i hope next year is better. i hope i’m better too. that i feel better, do better, live better. whoever you are, wherever you are reading this, thank you for spending any time at all with me in this space. it is still one of my favorite places, this corner of the internet. it brings me great peace, and i hope you have that. and, if you ever lose it, i hope you find it again, in spades.
VIRAHA is a collection birthed out of a space of enduring loneliness, a celebration for the hope of life, that never stays dead for long. These poems repurpose and invent mythologies, situating human fragility and resilience as part of the natural world: every broken heart, lost love, failed dream is as ordinary and bewildering as the sunrise, as a bird in the sky. This is a book about the hard work of continuing.
i wrote the bulk of this book during the first year of the pandemic. it’s the book i’ve always wanted to write and i’m so proud of these poems, that feel so much like my true writer’s voice.
get your copy of VIRAHA here today!
and i’m actually doing a virtual reading TONIGHT (december 13th) at 7:30pm EST with the incredible Lyd Havens (aka @heartmagician) and i would love to see you there—you can check out the event details here!
my new book, Our Synonyms: An Epic comes out tomorrow!
to celebrate, Party Trick Press is hosting an EPIC lil virtual book launch party! join us at 8pm EDT on wednesday, july 20th for religious retellings and feminine rage
tickets are free, but you have to register to attend! i hope you’ll be there, i owe so much of my writing life to you all
Just wanted to let you know that I stumbled on your writing in "the mermaid's voice returns in this one" and I can't wait to read more. Thank you so much for your contributions (I can't believe you're on Tumblr, we never get well-known people here). I hope you're doing okay!
wow, it means so much to me to get this message & to be considered "well-known"! tumblr was where i got my start, in so many ways, & i'm deeply grateful that @amandalovelace included my poem in their collection. thank you for reading & reaching out! i hope you're doing okay, too <3
six hundred and seventy nine: cell phone meditation
While waiting for my new iPhone to be restored to a backup of my old iPhone, I have found peace. I mean it sincerely. I can’t use my phone right now, not the glittering new one with the many camera lenses, or the old one with the scratched up phone case. There is no one to call. No one to text. I have watched four episodes of something on Netflix that was good and I know it because I cried. I always cry. I love that about myself, my older self. I wish it for my younger self, who swallowed down the lump in her throat. That girl wanted to be brave. When I was a kid, I stayed home alone and this was back before the Internet was a social place. It was just me and my father’s old desktops and laptops and legal pads. I did my best underage writing on those legal pads. I practiced my penmanship like I was on my way to becoming someone important. The world was quiet those afternoons, once I watched enough television and ate all the snacks and sorted through my homework sheets. There was just me. It wasn’t scary. I wasn’t afraid of my shadow or the noises from the neighbors upstairs. Everything was possible and good and right. Today feels like that day. After I got nervous and angry and tired, after the insipid work drama, after the McDonald’s meal that I ate on the floor of my bedroom: I pay for this bedroom. I pay for this apartment. I work my mind off and I so take it for granted. Now there is just peace. The phone will back up and I will try again and again and again. My old phone inside my new phone. The messages from 2012. I miss that girl, who was afraid of the dentist. I want to tell her: one day you’ll get a root canal all by yourself! What would she want to tell me? What is it that I used to know? I forget.
I woke up this morning, in my dark bed cave, and went through a series of thoughts. Mostly anxieties. And then this sliver: I have to write about this year, 2021, when so much happened: how I transitioned from part-time work to full-time work, from a copy writer to a copy editor; how I moved out of my old house in Somerville, where there was a porch and a sun room and a living room so big it impressed everyone and a revolving door of people, some I loved, really loved, and others—it was the year that someone didn’t give me grace and moved out; how I moved into an apartment in the heart of Allston, with all the restaurants and cafes and convenience stores that stay open past midnight, with my best friend in this city, and how there is now someone there, here, snoring in the next room, asking me what I want for dinner, part of my noise and my quiet and how it was earlier this year that I thought that I would be better off alone, and now that sounds like the stupidest thing I could ever want;
how I wrote and wrote and wrote this year and submitted and heard no enough times that I started to feel like it was this impossible thing; and how two of my manuscripts were accepted for publication by two different presses and how I have to sit with that news even now, weeks later, because it feels like such a fucking dream and how I am sure this is not the dream;
how I saw my family more this year than I did the last year and how that time was still so transient and how I’m so human I took parts of it for granted and how I wish I never take any of it for granted and how I wish there’s always some human, happy, healthy part of me that is able to take something for granted;
how I took myself to the dentist and the dentist was kind and my teeth are not irreparable and how this isn’t a big deal to anyone else but a big deal to my younger self, who was so scared;
how my dating life, wow my dating life—how there was hope and the vague outline of joy and a moment of peace and nights of uncertainty and crippling loneliness and how there were my friends, who called me and walked avenues with me and listened to me and showed me real love, the kind of love that makes me want to fall down to my knees and thank god, that these people are my people;
how it got better and got worse and stayed the same and I thought at various points This is the end and then I can’t give up; how I am someone’s favorite person, and how lucky I am, to know that deep down;
and how a few days ago, my roommate said 2022 is going to be a good year and I thought yes; how there is hope, even now, for a better future.
i'm so excited to announce that i have TWO books of poetry coming out in 2022!! OUR SYNONYMS: An Epic will be published by Party Trick Press! REVIVAL will be published by Game Over Books!
i started writing OUR SYNONYMS: An Epic in march 2020, while i was finishing up my last semester at @harvarddivinityschool, exploring themes of anger and forgiveness through the women in religious mythologies in judeo-christian, hindu, and buddhist traditions. this book means so much to me, because it bridges together my expertise as a religious studies scholar with my love for language. i’m deeply grateful that natahna and megan believe in this work, that is so experimental and subversive.
i started writing REVIVAL in april 2021, when the poems for national poetry month felt like a narrative. sure, there are some older poems in there, but the meat, the biggest chunks came out of a space of enduring loneliness, a celebration for the hope of life, that doesn’t ever stay dead for long. i wanted to die and i didn’t. i’m glad i didn’t. there are not enough words. there is not enough time. i can't believe this is my life. i’m so thankful that this work found a home at game over books.
in my heart, i’m still just a kid from queens, writing in my construction-paper-covered notebook. so when i say i can’t believe that i’m the author of FOUR books, i mean that i didn’t think something like this could happen for someone like me. i’ve never attended a writing retreat. i don’t have an MFA. i don’t have an agent. i don’t have a big social media following. so much of my “journey” has felt like being repeatedly knocked in the teeth. and it hurt. and it made me want to give up the path that wasn’t working for me. and it made me write for myself and all the people like me. behind this profoundly lucky, celebratory news is the backdrop of my failures, my loneliness, my grief. more than anything, i wish i could share this news with my younger self. i owe that girl everything.
thank you, you reading this, for being here and giving me the gift of your space and time.
stay tuned for preorder details and if you want to keep up with me and all my literary happenings, please join my email list!
I love men: their hands, the skin around
their nails, how they crack their knuckles
into me; when they make me coffee;
how easily they can walk into the night
& how they never let me walk into the night.
Men who make me flinch-quiet-apologize,
I love their earthquake laughter:
when they tell me I’m funny.
I’m a funny girl, giggling into her own punchline.
Men who hurt me, leave me, lose me,
ask me: how could you love me when
you didn’t know me?
Oh boy. How else?
A perfect morning, there is such a thing.
Unslept, half a dream:
you lean your whole body into mine;
we melt like emerald green
(your daffodil mouth)
(my sapphire heart).
Somewhere the color red is shaking.
You are my primary. I close my eyes
& there, in the dark, is a bright warm
something. You break open my sky.
— Yena Sharma Purmasir, “YELLOW (twelve of thirty)”
There is a cave inside me. I lived there
for years. A man drove me to it. I feared
his hand inside me & I wanted a hand
inside me, to be a puppet girl made real.
You don’t have to blame me, I blamed me.
You don’t have to forgive me, I forgave me.
My cave was good to me. I should be good
to my cave, the sacred place that held me
when I wouldn’t let anyone else hold me.
But I resent my cave, the dark lonely space
that ate into me. My cave became me.
And it didn’t matter how kind someone else
was, how gentle, how patient. When he touched
me, how I trembled, how I came tumbling down.
— Yena Sharma Purmasir, “CAVEWOMAN (eleven of thirty)”
I want to line up all the men I’ve loved in a row:
look them in the eye, each one more like my father
than the world ever let me be; measure their shoulders
against my shoulders; ask them to fill the tiniest space
in their crevice hearts for me; smell their nightmare
morning breath; tell them I see their perfect faces
on the passersby, always smiling / frowning / slack-jawed;
trade in my forgiveness for their friendship; promise them
I’ll be okay.
— Yena Sharma Purmasir, “FIBONACCI SEQUENCE (ten of thirty)”
The past thinks it knows me. I used to be
that person. My skeleton was good:
a house with just enough natural light.
There was an old soulmate who kissed me
like no one ever kissed me. There was a time
when no one kissed me. I was the unburied
princess. Love saved me. Now into the future
I run. I can’t see that far ahead but I promised
I’d be there. The bridge of my heart is waiting
for me to cross the world behind me:
don’t turn around / miss / long
there is more to life than love
— Yena Sharma Purmasir, “SPRINTER (nine of thirty)”
