Soliloquy

I have not seen the malaria-infested, lush-green waterways
That surround Santosh, nor have I drifted past Tangail
In paper boats made of dreams. My love, left untended
To in memories that I have not seen, exists in fragments.
Whatever light I had in my heart came from such moments
Of peace my grandfather had not known, and of warmth
My grandmother had not seen. Everyone loves a good migrant,

But my grandfather could not have known this when
Chased by blood-hungry fundamentalists into a land
Where they spoke in strange tongues and dreamt of India.
Crawling up into the unwelcome arms of his mother,
With his father already dead of kala-azar, my grandfather
Dreamt of a desert in the midst of the flora of Mymensingh
While forcing his eyes closed in a refugee camp that was home.

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