By Iqbal Chowdhury
The dream was still the same:
a highly strung sun,
a fettering breeze, bidding farewell to spring
with the wind chimes of our laughter.
It was child’s play; it was nothing
but at the same time it was everything,
yet I’m told to console myself with naseeb
but I’m back to taste life
immersed in that moment but
now all I want,
all I ever wanted, is to find you.
Explore those snowy trails, pick
memories of gay abandon,
then to go on our treks
where you taught me to ride,
where I left you with a goodbye hug.
Though the surroundings
spin through the kaleidoscope
of seasons, the air still carries this
scent lingering hope and these
Makeshift mountains still spring the same hope
just like they spring water,
their continuing presence testifies,
to the love that you left as timeless
In an age where hatred is easier,
and it rains a different kind of monsoon,
one that lasts all year
and scatters fragments of pain.
And even though they’ve got their man, I ask:
are a hundred good men worth a bad one?
Are their ways more just than ours?
For I will be here waiting for an answer,
and I will keep on waiting
‘Til the day I am shaken out of this moment
by sounds of a distant humming brewing in the sky,
the frantic sobbing of many more sons who join me,
The silent praying at graves like yours
Before one day,
they all are also looking around,
wondering, where everything has vanished
and how quickly this hope-filled scent
turns into nothing but a smoking stench.
Iqbal Chowdhury discovered his passion for writing whilst studying at university. He hopes to emigrate to either the Atlas Mountains or the Urubumba Valley one day, so that he can finally finish his novel.
Photo exclusively for The Platform by: Hanim Abdul Cader