Soft things do more than survive.
They determine what survives.
In this collection of intimate, unguarded poems, Maria K. Jimmy explores the quiet strength that lives beneath womanhood. Through reflections on the body, memory, desire, shame, tenderness, and becoming, these poems give voice to emotions that are often carried in silence.
Drawing on images as elemental as water carving stone, breath moving through storms, and the enduring power of the womb that births the world, Soft Things That Survive reminds readers that softness is a force that shapes life itself.
Poetry has never belonged to rules. It owes no explanation for its shape, its pauses, or its silences. It exists to speak what is often held back and difficult to name. In spare, evocative lines, these poems reach women who have carried the weight of expectation and are learning to honour their voices, their desires, and their becoming.
Scattered through the book are the author’s own simple, hand-drawn illustrations, offered in the same spirit of honesty, echoing the rawness and intimacy of the poems themselves.
For every woman who has ever questioned her softness, these poems offer a quiet reassurance. They are an invitation to sit with your own voice, your own becoming, and the strength that has always lived quietly within you.
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Maria K. Jimmy
Dr. Maria K. Jimmy is a medical doctor and writer based in Kochi, India. Maria began writing poems and short prose at the age of eight, drawn to stories and the companionship of books. Literature shaped much of her childhood curiosity, even as her formal path later led her to medicine.
Medical training deepened her curiosity about bodies and minds. Her writing often moves between medicine and lived experience, exploring womanhood, the body, memory, and mental health.
In 2020, Maria won a national writing contest conducted by Penguin Random House India in collaboration with Romedy Now, with entries curated by bestselling author Ravinder Singh. Her short story “Arjun” was featured in the collaborative anthology You Are All I Need.
After contributing to several collaborative anthologies, she edited and compiled Aesthetics: An Artistic Take on Beauty (2021), a collection bringing together the voices of 100 writers exploring perspectives on beauty.
In 2025, she published the children’s picture book Tamara and Tiny Wonders, available on Amazon.
Maria has been an invited speaker in schools and college spaces, sharing reflections on health, emotional wellbeing, and storytelling.
Her writing and interviews have appeared on platforms such as Romedy Now and Humans of Kerala, and her work has also been featured in Reader’s Digest India and The Hindu Young World.
Maria also writes on her website, mariakjimmy.com, where she publishes essays on health and lived experience in medicine. Moving between science and story, the space explores the human experiences medicine often encounters but cannot always name.
One of the recurring features on her website is The Unprescribed, a series that explores the parts of health and healing that cannot be written on a prescription.
Soft Things That Survive is her first poetry collection. The book is dedicated to her mother, the first woman through whom she learned to understand the world.
Maria shares fragments of writing and reflections on her Instagram page: @mariakjimmywrites
