Silence

27/0617

You have thoughts,

Thoughts which you allow to fester,

But not to exist out in the open.

The thoughts flow like liquid,

Moldable,

But you do not hold the power to bend them.

The thoughts try burning their way out,

Through your skin,

With the acidity of their crippling darkness, 

But you try to contain them;

Through every wall that they burn down,

You build a new one,

Your walls do not have doors,

Because you are afraid of what these thoughts represent,

In fear, 

You find,

Silence.

You have words lying,

At the bottom of your throat;

Words which try to claw their way out,

Looking for a gap,

A crack in your fortitude,

One that was forced down your throat at the age of 9,

But all that you could tell your loved ones,

Was that you were fine,

In guilt,

You found,

Silence.

You have dreams, 

Ones that you cannot share,

Ones where you are free from the burden,

Of the shackles imposed onto you,

A burden you want to relieve yourself of.

In your dreams,

You  see what life is like without the silence,

You find stability,

Peace and harmony,

But it goes in vain,

Because that is a reality,

Which you cannot obtain,

So, in sadness, 

You found,

Silence,

In fear of the unknown possibilities,

You hid your words,

In fear of being jettisoned like an astronaut,

From the spaceship of your broken happiness,

You did not allow the words to exist,

Out in the open.

Your deepest insecurities,

Stay hidden,

Remain unreal, 

Non existent, 

Until you allow it to leave your lips,

Your pale purple lips,

Lips that are the doorway to the truth,

A door whose hinges are tired,

Of holding its burden, 

Hinges that are waiting to give away,

But they must not,

In shattered mirrors, 

You saw yourself,

In silence.

Imagine

Imagine tomorrow if we got our first coffee for the weekend together like we always did.

Imagine if we got to fiddle with our coffee for hours like always because nobody else has shown up yet.

Imagine if the waiter didn’t ask for the bill again because I’m too busy listening to you rant.

Imagine us switching off our phones so that we don’t have an excuse to look down and ignore each other for a second more than we have to.

Imagine us getting out and walking around for hours looking for another place where nobody can listen to my silent amazement as I gaze into your deep brown eyes.

Imagine me holding your head against my chest once again as you almost fall asleep.

Imagine me holding your hand and fiddling with the ring on your index like an excited five year old.

Imagine my rough lips on yours once again. Imagine me passionately pulling you close and making you mine like always.

Imagine if it was perfect, if there was nobody else in the coffee shop for the rest of our lives. That we could talk to each other for another eternity. That I could see your hair smile with your eyes as I kiss you on the forehead, that I could hear your laughter at my childish amazement. That I could feel your soft arm brushing against mine as I sipped on the last bit of my coffee.

Imagine my rugged fingertips on the back of your neck for one last time, as I kiss you hard as if to say goodbye.

Imagine if we had a proper goodbye.

Imagine if I could see your rickshaw disappear at a turn for one last time.

Imagine if I had one last text on my phone afterwards,
“I love you.”

Imagine if we could sip on the same horrible coffee together for once last time.

Criminal

Her mother always told her to believe in God. Someone who was so powerful, that he could shift the entire fate of the universe in the whiff of a finger. Someone who’s so divine and forgiving, that he’d forgive any crime if you repent to him enough. Someone who’s so kind, that he wouldn’t let any of his children be miserable if they looked up to him.

And so, she’d always wondered why he decided to take the only life she had ever known away form her; just when she was reaching out to him. She still remembers everything, quite distinctively. Her family would stay up all night to pray and take seheri even when it wasn’t Ramadan. Her dad was almost never home. And when he was, almost never able to bring around 3 meals. So they would fast, using that as an excuse for the hunger. They’d look up to the heavens every night with their hands clasped together only to ask for one thing, salvation. From the life that they’d been granted.

Salvation. And now,

She wakes up every morning feeling dirty. Every muscle in her body creaks like an overused old armchair. Her head almost gives into a thin, sheering pain. The kind of pain that you can hear, like a telephone that’s been put out of the dialer for too long. She wonders if cutting her head open would cure it. She wonders if it’s worth it.

The steady ray of sunlight fills her bucket faster than the meer trickle that seeps through the rusty tap. The faint beam gently sneaks through a small hole on top of the quadruped tin structure, cradles her soft naked skin for a bit and then slides down into the barely occupied plastic tub. It tries to remind her that she’s alive. A reminder she desperately needs to prepare for the next day.

Emptiness , often followed by a feeling of dissipating sorrow fills whatever soul she has left as the thin stream of water rids her body of the sins from last night. She doesn’t know what she wants in life anymore. All she knows is that the marks on her body and the sins they carry pays for her food. She doesn’t know where she’ll go or what she’ll become when she’s too old. When the customers stop coming or when her body’s no longer appealing. She doesn’t know who’ll be there by her side when she’s finally “free”.

Freedom. Taken. Never given.

Her father was and probably still is a drunkard. She has’t seen or heard much of him in the last 3 years. Except the one time he came around to ask for money. She could smell the alcohol dripping from his beard through the thick air freshner in the brothel room. But she gave him the money anyway. Less out of love and more so because she knew if she didn’t, he’d go home and hurt her maa.

The funny bit is, he looked lost. As if he stepping into her world made him contemplate the gravity of the decision he made.

She still wonders if she really meant that less to her father. A commodity, exchangeable for money. They were cooking that night, when they heard the gradually louder exchange that went on outside. The loan-sharks had sent men.

The men had started to pillage through every room in the house, looting everything they could carry on their bare hands and destroying what they couldn’t. They were going to either take the money or take everything they had. She took refuge in a small storehouse behind the kitchen. But one of the men found her.

Apparently her dad had kept her mortgage for half the money he owed. Twenty thousand taka. That’s how much she was worth. Not a penny more. She hoped that her father would come for her or atleast try to take her back. But he was always to drunk for that. She’d like to think that her mother was trying to get to get to her somehow, but at one point even that seemed a faint possibility. And they promised her a good life, the people who took her. One free from poverty and hunger. Free from the devils she’d been fighting all her life. And so, she took it.

Today, some new girl in the brothel told her that her that maa had died. Some old man came around and sent her the message. But apparently he warned her so that she wouldn’t show up to the funeral. She’d only ruin the sanctity of the programme. His words sounded like he was accusing her of something. Of some crime she was so extremely guilty of, that she would be too unpure to attend her own mother’s burial.

Sanctity, pureness, holiness whatever you call it. She gave up all of that three years ago when she ‘chose’ this life.  She wonders if she ever really had a choice. She wonders if  God would still forgive her. She feels used, only to wash herself off and to be used again. She feels like she’s a parasite living only on the edges of ‘pure’ society. They look at her like she deosn’t belong, careful not to touch her like she’d somehow spread some fatal virus among them. They look at her like a criminal, someone who’s on death row waiting for her time to come. She’s a criminal, she knows that. She’s a criminal for the ‘choice’ she made. She’s a criminal to herself, to her society, her family. But above all that, she’s a criminal to her God.