Poetic License

Today marks the 73rd birthday of arch-feminist poetess, activist Fahmida Riaz, who left us rather too soon last year.

No, beta, the trees can’t talk and sing, nature doesn’t invite you in, and the wind certainly doesn’t give you wings!

My name was the talk of the world. But as it usually happens, my importance had been lost in the noise.

This history and beauty that we let go, it still exists, just muted and diluted from before.

Where the people are mad, the dogs are so wild. Where the gods have no say, no justice, no morals.

She tried to hide the brooch as if it were a treasure worth stealing, not realising something else needed guarding.

That gaunt little girl with empty eyes that stared at her from different car windshields had disappeared.

She was no stranger to foul smells as she was raised on a pile of stink, but this was the whiff of a man turned animal

I was left here, on this prayer mat, talking to the one thing that I didn’t believe in until a few months ago.

It was almost as if her life was holding on to the darkness of the night. A darkness it refused to let go of.