Your gaze, a dagger, cuts through me

This is the first time I let you in, but you’ve already made yourself at home. You are bumbling around in my kitchen, as though you have been making me tea for a lifetime.

The top selections in poetry, flash fiction and artwork for Day 17 of the Sehri Tales challenge; prompt: Together

'Rise': Sehri Tales selections, Day 16

The top selections in poetry, flash fiction and artwork for Day 15 of the Sehri Tales challenge; prompt: Library

So in the spirit of Independence, I urge my reader to exercise independence of consumption—to question what you are buying, what you are reading, what you are watching, and which of these you are really given the freedom to choose.

The top selections in poetry, flash fiction and artwork for Day 14 of the Sehri Tales challenge; prompt: Double

The top selections in poetry, flash fiction and artwork for Day 13 of the Sehri Tales challenge; prompt: Ease

Am I allowed to hold on to you? / But you are waves of serendipity, / Moving forward in each clutch

The top selections in poetry, flash fiction and artwork for Day 12 of the Sehri Tales challenge; prompt: Total

The top selections in poetry, flash fiction and artwork for Day 11 of the Sehri Tales challenge; prompt: Resist

I remember the Ramadan of 2020, which was the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and also the year my friends and I decided to shift the Sehri Tales to our own platform and open it up to a wider audience.

When my literature professor heard I had been delving into Bangla literature and cultural media in pursuit of a self-undertaken project to finally learn Bangla, she suggested I see the 1970 film Jibon Thekey Neya.

On my first day of a class on postcolonial theory, our professor ended the lecture with a simple exercise that we would reflect back on at the end of our semester.

The top selections in poetry, flash fiction and artwork for Day 10 of the Sehri Tales challenge; prompt: Cheese

You have made ice out of my heart;/ we were once nothing–you brutalise me

The top selections in poetry, flash fiction and artwork for Day 9 of the Sehri Tales challenge; prompt: Long

“Stop mocking me, Atif! I am telling you there is something here.” 

Words were never my greatest strength/ But the arsonist's child will read them

The top selections in poetry, flash fiction and artwork for Day 8 of the Sehri Tales challenge; prompt: Flick