Fear(less)

Fear is
lying deserted on a roadside, like a wreckage after drowning, sinking into darkness from skin to soul
Fear is
Hands flailing, a beaten animal, limbs swollen, stench of rotting breath, bleeding wound
Fear is
When the mind longs to go home but could only focus on the stink and mutilation
Fear is
Always staying in a group, quickened steps in a dark alley, lessons of being a ‘good girl’ and your failure to educate your sons
Fear is
My hunched back, my quivering spine, my gut-shuttering voiceless scream and the sneering man

I eat, play, grow up and learn fear.
I am afraid of everything
I am afraid of you, him and them.

So, how dare you call me Nirbhaya?
How on Earth am I the fearless?

Goddammit, I am afraid of everything, you, him, and them.

Fear is the ice-cold deadliness that I wear every day.
Fear is the bone chilling numbness that I live.

So, how dare you call me Nirbhaya?

Call it LIFE or LOVE, choose as you wish to

কথা ফুরিয়ে যায়, তবুও প্রেম থেকে যায়
নীরবতার আনাচে কানাচে, কল্পনার নরম ভাজে।

প্রেম ফুরিয়ে যায়, তবুও কথা থেকে যায়
নিঃসঙ্গতার আড়ালে আবডালে, কথাকাটাকাটির মাঝখানে।

Words end, yet love remains
in the nook and corner of the silence of cremation
among the soft tangles of the spider-web of imagination.

Love ends, yet words remain,
In the hiding branches of the deadly alone-ness,
in the uneven layers of those pride and that defiance.

Moments

That line where the orange and the blue of the sky merge and give birth to a honey brown colour that reminds you of a mix-n-match of your half-baked dreams and ember-like desires

That music which engulfs you like the velvety warmth and becomes the droplet in the corner of your eyes

That imagination when you see the magpies have joined wings to make a bridge for you to meet your beloved

That conversation which begins with how-are-you and ends with I-am-fine, yet the in-between silence keeps chattering and speaking thousand words

That memory which grows a banyan tree in the mind, and your slightly-wrinkled forehead quivers, struggling to fathom if it's a joy or a sorrow

'That' is what it is all about!

Next summer, I want to believe, I will be plucking the sky that always hangs right outside my bedroom window.

Failure

It was nice as long as we were sipping the coffee,
its warmth flowing down our throat like molten honey,
the taste of your quickened heartbeat and the 
slow vapor from the coffee cups
were becoming the wet softness on my cheek as
we were hoping for a day in the future.
But when that day comes we had already spilled the coffee and those caustic words
making an ugly stain on the white table cloth.