They were supposed to return home
with tired eyes, undone ties,
A crumpled homework sheet,
A half-eaten packet of chips;
A half-eaten tiffin packed by mum....
They were not supposed to be
this silent, this still-
They had algebra due next week,
debates, crushes,
Assignments half-edited,
Dreams-half articulated.
But today,
Only their shadows returned.
Fire does not ask names.
It swallows,
Erases,
Reduces to ash
What mothers raised
with lullabies and lentils.
The fire did not slow down,
But, the world stopped.
Their ID cards now rest
beside their burnt school bags and torn shoe laces,
Mother's ironed uniforms,
Still smelling of detergent and dreams,
All burnt in ashes,
And, all hopes too burnt with cements.
The blaze burned through
not just cloth and carbon,
But our collective conscience.
Uniforms became funeral shrouds.
Tiffin boxes melted into twisted steel.
What kind of future
catches fire this easily?
They say it was an “accident”-
but how many accidents
make a pattern?
How many alarms must be ignored,
Exits locked,
Wires coiled like snakes
under ceilings that drip death?
Dhaka is a city
where dreams combust faster
than a fire truck can arrive.
In the name of education,
We gave them buildings,
not safety.
Curriculums,
not care.
In the name of training,
We gift them death,
Now, candles flicker
where chalk once wrote their names.
Dear us,
Do we feel warm
when the fire touches our silence?
Tell me,
Who will mark their attendance tomorrow?
Ashes don’t speak,
But grief does.
And we-
The living, the left behind-
must become its echo,
Until justice burns brighter
than corruption worldwide ever could.
Ashes don't give attendance,
They become fireflies.
Why is it that ambition
bleeds out so easily
on this state?
Why must the brightest die
before the midday bell?
They gave us grief
like math problems unsolvable-
Tell me-
who signs the leave letters
of the dead?
Who updates
the class attendance sheet
and adds: "Deceased in road crash",
Or, " Deceased- burnt in plane crash"
next to their names?
Their classmates now write
justice slogans in red ink
but this blood-
is not erasable.
Milestone, a name meant
to measure progress,
now marks a grave.
I write this not for poetry
but to shout into the void-
as the parents wail
against heaven’s indifference
and the state’s apathy.
In this republic,
even childhood
is an endangered species,
And, specimen of cruel experiments.
©® Farheen Bhuiyan Nancy
Time Frame: 12.15 pm, Mirpur Cantonment.
The golden eyed girl
The girl I dreamt last night
She came before the fire,
A girl of golden breath,
Her hair kissed by the morning
as if Noor had taken form.
She did not speak,
but her eyes,
They opened like ayahs,
Spilling from a divine tongue.
Golden,
and glowing.
Too calm to be merely dream,
Too soft to be of this world.
That very day,
Metal screamed through sky -
and hundreds fell like stars and petals not anyone dreadfully wished for,
Children -
burning,
Not like candles,
But like warnings.
O Allah...
Did she come
to tell me,
They were already safe?
That light would carry them
past the smoke?
She -
The soul of a hundred names,
A million undone lullabies,
Perhaps even my own soul
in the language of flame and gold.
I did not wake crying -
but now I cry.
Their bones are no longer ash,
But part of a prayer spoken
in my breath.
O golden-eyed child,
Did you come from them,
or are you their return?
©® Farheen Bhuiyan Nancy
On Milestone tragedy.
Time Frame: 12.20 pm, Mirpur Cantonment.
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