Writer's own thoughts!

  Again I sit alone with myself,  Me and my shadows beneath the dim light- face to face,  The terror of being alone begins again.  But, when was the last time I wasn’t?!  These empty rooms speak volume of that!  Perhaps, I took association too seriously too close to my heart,  But, the hearts of people- they are always closed as if enclosed envelops they hand over until the messages are delivered- the letters read over.  But, individuals always take companionship for convenience, but never for permanence. Is it too hard to find your tribe?! Is it too hard to belong?! To belong to a person?! To a commune?! The empty chair is still speaking volume.  I sit here under the dim light, Me alone with my unreconciled shadows.  I refute them to reckon the unravelled....!  My shadows speak loudly, All these crowds and people in shrouds imitating kindness.... But, at the end of the day they are full of themselves thinking only about themselves....

 I am manifesting a sweet guy who'll understand how much it took from me to walk the high roads of Texas , how exhausted my body is from walking miles and how much heat I have absorbed from the Texas Sun above my head. I want someone to walk beside me  on the bridges of the new cities- hand in hand, side by side along the trails and watch the sunsets while sipping our starbucks coffee. I want to swim in the Miami beach, see the Florida lakes, wake up in the Colorado red brick sunrays on a Saturday morning, And, wake up to the sweet dreams in the arms of a sweetheart who can be with me in all trials and trails. I want someone to notice me behind my smile and fathom how tired I am after all the battles I have fought alone, and listen to me when I am vulnerable, as if he can see my soul piercing through his loving eyes. I don't want the gaze of a wanderer anymore, I want someone deep who can heal with his words, calm demeanor, quiet understanding and win a globe within me. I want...

My father had a dream,  Not the grandeur one but a dream stitched with humility, audacity and simplicity.  My father was courageous,  He wanted to build a state with his family and kids.  Not the ones that would glitter from the chandeliers but from stars,  From constellations above! He chased the unreal for a long period and made every impossible into a possibility, into a potentiality with chivalry.  His dreams smelled of novelty. Of concrete cement that gathered beneath his fragile fingernails.  My father's breath smelled like paint, dust and cloves.  Because, once he was an young boy with empty pockets, sleeping in the unknown shades, looking for living in the foreign lands,  Those alienated soils gave him identity,  A reason to work harder to build his generation's pathway, their gripping identities.  The social destiny that he curved for us was nothing less magical.  Unbelievable was his journey-  Starting from a hum...

The sadness in my eyes has numbed the empathy towards the pain of the collective.  I no longer read the unspoken words of the kid lying beside the highway beneath the foot over bridge, I don't translate the language of hunger and try to reach them.  I have become numb. I don't understand the silence of homeless people who are always looking for a meaning in their rootless lives,  I don't recall their cries for help.  Who are counting stars with an empty stare.  I no longer feel deep for them.  I think my grief and loneliness has made me shallow.  I have grown into a stoic carefree person.  But, did I ever want to be like this?! A stern mountain with a calm demeanour?!  My heart has become an alter of only one echo. I remember the day when my heart was broken.  When it was pierced fiercely with no swords but shields....What was meant to protect attacked me. A shield if wielded to wrong hands can rip apart. It frightens me- this digression...

 Now you know,  The permanent damage that you've done. They call it survival,  But, I named it silence.  A disease called- incapable of love.  No physician can give prescription on it, No laboratory can discover the reason beneath it. The diagnosis report arrives late after the predator leaves the marks,  Only after the heart forgets the weather of warmth.  Not because love doesn’t knock on the door,  But, because the door is permanently locked.  All callings go in vain,  Doorbell keeps ringing, but no one answers.  Until the hands of lover bleeds.  But, is there anyone who is ready to wait and bleed?!  The symptoms are quite subtle: Eyes that avoids affection and mistakes softness as danger,  Hands that retract from gentleness as if infatuation is a burning fire. Pulses intensifies only at the footsteps of departure.  Then?! A quiet grief spirals back from head to toe,  A relief follows.  I dodged a bu...

The cockroach did not know that evolution never taught humans to befriend it, And, It didn’t learn to hide. It approached towards me not with an intention of hurting me,  But it approached swiftly not with venom but six hesitant feet, and two trembling antennae, That shook its head with an unspeakable greeting.  Perhaps, it thought proximity was the beginning of a new friendship.  It came near to me, close to my ears as if it wanted to whisper some tea, and spill some secrets. But, I turned away in disgust. It ran into my feet, with its polished shell and  offered me a glittery smile. The smile of a being who has never been loved, Yet arrives with a fading hope that someday someone will love and accept it as it is!! I did not ask, why it was here! Neither did I bother to wonder- if my fear was valid to kill a being, a living creature?! And, me as a human,  I only remembered parts of everything I ever inherited-  The fear, The disgust,  The pollution, A...

There was an ocean within me once, It was deep,blue,wide. In that deep blue ocean- Tides shone so bright, Faith precipitated as salt- it tasted sweet until all flavours faded away, Beneath the ebbs and tides- a love formed on the aisles!  Between a mermaid and a whale! As if fated union. A canon of fire blew right in front of the invisible castles of doubts, as if something lingering is yet to happen, Just then the missiles of hope were thrown away in despair and desperation! As if a parade of mockery will show on the day!  A love formed so immeasurable that was one of a kind! Then an imposter came in a disguise of a storm in my calm ocean to stir waves! Without any noise, without any declaration of warfare, He attacked my sails. In the deepest blue of the sea, He devoured every ounce of love alive in me. Just like a giant blue whale, he ended me. In his big stomach lie my vows, My vanity- my erroneous sanctity! The big appetite of his left me scouring for any insanity! In the...

In knowing you, little by little, I cannot deny,  That the flaw was not in your nature but in the culture in making of you- that shaped you, how you act, how you behave.  It couldn’t be unseen. Only after all this accumulating time, did I understand the depth of the cultural decay horrendously affecting you.  A spectacle so repellent,  So, unattractive that stirs only revulsion.  Problem upon problem,  One issue after another,  As if an endless trope of shortcomings- a legacy of neglect, a culture that repulses the beloved.  And, since you have come across my path,  Standing on the crossroads, I can feel a fierce disdain within me for you.  Contempt for the cultural atmosphere that made you a tyrant- a shallow scallop.   I strongly detest it with all my might,  I feel the abhorrence not only for you but the culture that shaped you.  ©® Farheen Akter Bhuian Timespan: 15th july, 2026, Mirpur Cantonment. 

I wish I was not this ambitious for every direction I have gone demanded me of a bereavement for everything I leave behind.  In teaching my arms how not to tremble while carrying them.  In hiding my tears,  My voice not shaking while saying goodbyes.  And, my soul not escaping the ribcage while tightly grabbing them. I don't want to let go of them - those who are my people.  Who have ever known my grief,  Who have understood me beyond my cold  exterior, tears pushed back behind my smiley face. Those who have read between the lines.  I don't want to lose them at all.  I wish I had wanted less. Perhaps, then the people I love would have remained within arm's length, Their laughter echo in my ears, Their faces not blurred for poor net connection,  And, timezones not differed that would make seeing them difficult.  I wish I could always touch them, feel their presence.  Cuddle them tightly and keep them in front of my eyes.  B...

  There is a strange grief reserved for those of us who have lived our lives learning the arithmetic of departure - who have folded home and bits of themselves in the large suitcases, carried entire neighbourhood, relations behind the ribcage of their hearts. They leave. They move on. They had to leave.  They no longer hope or believe in permanence. Because, each time they saw home within something they had to lose it. Lose it in the cruelty of situations. Still, they carry a part of them everywhere they go. They keep furnishing the empty rooms with the tenderness of belongingness and ownership - no matter how temporary it is. Each time we leave, people ask us about the thrill of new beginnings, the excitement of exploring new streets, building new homes- within people and spaces in a brand new city. They ask me how do we feel who are just messengers of love and devotion, of sincerity, who keep moving one city to another- ever migrating, ever moving begun from childhood and la...

May Almighty, in his immeasurable capacity and wisdom with his trembling mercy never weave my fate with the melancholic souls those who ever found peace in my ruins, happiness in my helplessness and who took my fractures for pleasures, humbleness as weakness and who lingered at the altar of my griefs and named their fascination and need for my dependence as devotion. May those who adored me most when my voice found no place, my words vague, my tongue wrapped with uncertainty, when my boundaries dissolved like salt in the ocean, never reach me when I become an island.  When my spirit fitted into the molds not meant to hold the vast spirit of mine, when I craved the crumbs of affection, may they stay far away from my belongings and I may stay out of their bounds, out of their reach, may their malicious hands never touch me again. Before that, may their filthy hands cut open and get drained in the guttery drainage.  As there are those people the world is filled with who do not ch...

Some people soften remembering their forsaken ones. Their voice loses its sharpness,  Their anger flies quietly like old letters shattered beneath the bedding.  A familiar song from distance and then they remember,  The walls they have built with pride and ego slowly begins to tremble in the flickers of regrets. They revisit memories they once buried with stubborn mind. The unfinished chapter they wanted to close remains unending.  The eyes they avoided becomes a testimony of their ruins.  The love they call weakness is simply too heavy to carry- burdened by regrets and grievances of an irreplaceable love.  Some people become kinder with age not because life taught them mercy, but because regrets did.  Because, somewhere in between the upheavals,  Someone waited for them sincerely and they abandoned the devotion for their ego, pride, hustle and immaturity or for the illusion that another person will love them with the same intensity.  And, gu...

There is no quick fix for a person that has engraved a name so deeply in her heart. People speak of moving on, healing, covering up the wounds, finding replacements, joy in quick fixes as if the heart was a cracked screen to be fixed within an hour, As if love were a habit that we can outgrow and let go with discipline.  So, I tried.  I tried all routines, all schemes, all heavy workloads to distract myself from loving you, From remembering you but I miserably failed. I come back to the turning point and it's always you.  God knows how I tried to forget you, But, strongly you return back in my consciousness.  I tried to hold the hands of the strangers,  I tried to feel their gentle strokes, tenderness of the touch but I felt nothing - they were empty.  I tried to look deep into their eyes but felt nothing- they were emptied souls.  Even there, I tried to search you in them, in their gaze, in their smiles, their gentle strokes.  Nothing was there!...

The life that I have curved was not a straight line. Yet, I refuse to bend in the mere delights....!  I deny to walk in the shadows that reigns the darkness.....!  The life that I have carved.... was never meant to be a straight line, It bled through midways in broken alleys, Through unfinished prayers,  Through storms that wore familiar faces.  Even in my breakdown I chose familiarity.  Even in my deathbed I chose humility.  Even in my darkest night I chose kindness and understanding, for those who shattered me unarmed into pieces.  Yet, I willfully oppose to kneel before the temporary delights that has no insights,  Tempting initiations that tend to seduce the weary soul, with every lifting sanctions they orbit around the same axis--- always revolving around -- meaninglessly, without any call.  I denied the comfort to sit with the shadows lurking beneath my soul, that cherishes the darkness within me- I revolt.  I revolt. Against, the ...

 He arrived like a spring rain on a drought-stricken day,  Infused with stale breath. The cause of my inner death and revival after ruins and chaotic devastations, The hope I became. I thought love had to be like theology. Complete faith that would have a final destination. I thought I was learning a new language— But, soon it became a language of silent bruises and wounds of a woman shrinking into repressed shadows acceptable under his pride. I walked on his shown path, I stomped upon those rocky trails, My legs bled with unseen bruises and scratches. They could not walk long. I was thirsty. Thirsty and hungry for love, But emotional hunger grew more and more for his tactics, Became a victim and survivor of his emotional games.  I was smitten, not merely with his face, But, his rescuer personality, I thought he would save me from drowning. I was drowning heedlessly. But, because of him, I drowned more  until I completely  submerged in the pitfalls. Oh, how care...