Migration
They set her birthright on fire
in July 1983. When they doused
the black flames, she collected
her pain from the ashes, hid them
in her shoes so she could share
them with her children.
She moved over land and sea
from unsure place to unsure place
until she arrived in an apartment
she struggled to afford. The stories
she tells her children wrap gold chains
around their necks and ankles,
keeps them close.
She offers the ashes to her children,
tells them to press them into
diamonds. She soothed their pain with
words in other tongues, that were
snuck out of the motherland in their
father’s shoes. Her children were
bathed
in cinders, carry ashes in their pockets for
their own children to press into diamonds.
Vanessa Vigneswaramoorthy (@vandoesthings) is an Illankai Tamil settler artist, writer, and researcher residing and working on Treaty 13 and 14 Territories. Her work has been featured in Living Hyphen, NO NIIN Magazine, and Porter House Review. Vanessa’s writing explores themes of Tamil diaspora, BIPOC solidarity, and community care, delving into the intricate ways migration, identity, and intergenerational trauma shape both personal and collective experiences. “migration” is a poem about the Tamil experience, about belonging to a war-affected community, and about how traditions are passed down in the complex reality of diaspora.
“Migration” was written years ago, when Vanessa Vigneswaramoorthy first began exploring Tamil diasporic identity through poetry. It began as a larger work titled “Second Generation”, which focused on intergenerational trauma. Over time, she gradually pared it down, refining it until this version emerged— a distilled reflection of inherited diasporic memories, remnants of her earlier work.