Divine Prayer

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 bounds-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 cherish the soul for who they are but the wound they carry. They see the hole in their being, the vacancy in the heart they keep hiding so carefully. They scratch those holes with sharp blades. Lazar  sharp tongue cuts without knife indeed.

May Almighty protect us from those who build entire kingdoms from another's ruins, self-doubts and worries. Those who builds entire thrones by weaponizing the surrendered pieces of the broken souls wandering aimlessly, who forgot how to preserve their being and protect themselves- their shattered selves.  

May God keep me distant from those who flourished in the dim seasons of my becoming, Who watered their gardens with my silence, who felt most secure when I was uncertain, most affectionate when I was dependent, most generous when I was too diminished to refuse.

Let no holy thread of destiny bind me to those who required my compression to feel expanded, who called my adjustment as compromise, who loved my disappearance, my exhaustion and helplessness as loyalty, who loved my self-erasure. Let them be free. Me too from their clutches. 

For love, in its purest version does not kneel before a monster, cage themselves and label it shelter. The monsters who tried to break your spirit and make you learn the rules of subjugation and subjection, may you unlearn those traumas that they wanted to impose and imprint on your soul. 

Genuine love doesn’t harvest weakness as if it were bouquet of flowers. It doesn’t find intimacy in submission, or in dependency.  Love should summon a person to their higher destiny, their higher call and greater potentiality, not reward the cowardice practice of abandoning themselves and being benign to be with someone. Love should make you a better human being, Your best version. 

And so, I pray, not in fear, but in the sole clarity that follows the instinctual heart, the cruelest survival- because the soul always want to be happy. And, the soul wants protection from those who rejoice from their sufferings, may they never be able to find comfort in my helplessness, never find a home within me, and that I may never again mistake their hunger for my subjugation as affection.

May they belong to their malicious chapter of life and grow from their own ruins. And, I remain to my peaceful days where love grows from healing but not from the need of control and domination. 

May God place vast deserts between their desire for my fall and my longing to become a whole new content person. 

May Almighty teach me to identify them at the very first glance and differ between a hand intending to lift me and a hand reaching to scratch me, force to kneel me down.

And, may those who loved me only when I was weak, meek and naive lose the privilege of witnessing who I become when I am finally, magnificently healed and build my empire.

©® Farheen Akter Bhuian (Nancy)

Timeframe: 11.11 pm, Tagar, MIST's faculty guest house, Mirpur Cantonment, Dhaka-1216.

Note: 'যারা আমার অসহায়ত্বকে ভালবাসে, ঈশ্বর কখনও আমাকে তাদের, আর তাদেরকে আমার না করুক!!'