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.