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Sohagni Roy

Abstract Tragedy Fantasy

4  

Sohagni Roy

Abstract Tragedy Fantasy

A FADING LIFE

A FADING LIFE

3 mins
250



Every day when the sun hides behind trees

A girl rides past my house

I look at her through the windows of my room.

She goes around again and again

until she gets tired.

She does too many things at once,

bark back at the dog following her

greet salam to the strangers walking by

stop to smell the yellow flower

and I wonder what scent it bears for her?

As she pushes on her pedals

her head sways back and forth

as if a song stuck inside her head.

She completes half another lap,

abandon her smile on the ground and goes home. 


I drink my Sulaimani

and do not wash my cup for a day.

I am a woman—

I do not know how to cook food not dream

about husbands and weddings

I have not smelled enough flowers

or held enough lovers on my breasts.

I am half-man half-woman, they mocked.

My god does not love me, I am told

because I lighted cigarettes

Harami, I was called.

My sujoods were incomplete

I was branded khafir to my Lord.

My worth is the dirty cups stacked in my room,

the outlawed ink under my bra line,

the hairs that crawled out my underwear. 


Every single day for twenty-three years

A mother– who runs around the house

morning, evening and night

doing too many things at once.

checking if everyone ate enough

making gharam chai four times a day

carrying dirty plates in both hands and naked regret

among putrid stench of fish

soaking khajoor every night

to feed health into her husband

cleaning every dusty furniture so that

her daughter doesn’t sneeze too much at night and wakes the sleeping man.

I wonder when was the last time

she stopped and listened to her

favourite ghazal,

the last time Ammi smelled the

flowers in her Gulshan,

the last time she looked at her

daughter and caressed the dust

settling at the sickness of her pale heart,

the last time she weighed her dil for

more than one fertile womb, six

cents of land and ten sovereign gold.


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