For once, can love look like a Sunday morning; filled with warmth, calmness and motionless?

Sweet cold air finds its way to my lungs,

wounded limbs heal faster, / than a wounded conscience

There are no clocks inside this house. The walls are quiet, the windows loud.

What happens when your desire Lies in being alive?

Lacerating the unfortified,/ Picking at the flesh for bad blood to find

Bury your feet where its green And when the air is thin you will see 

His five sons/ Were killed and the books...

She’s as real as my meandering/ As tangible as tinkering.

Once a homebody, nestled in its embrace. Now lost, a wanderer in a boundless space.

Seven feet of mud swept water, /Bodies under rubble.

She doesn’t need an alarm For the last hour of the night.

Her Kohl-rimmed eyes, dangling earrings,/ The chiffon scarf, the satin silk shirt

Would it be too much to ask you/ To forgive me for the carnal sin I did not commit?

What makes You a boy, me a girl; Me a popper, you an Earl?

Crimson blood splattered amongst the ravaged lands

We’re still alive/ but they wanted to die a natural death

Self-confidence shaken, some shattered memories in their side bags

Being a woman comes to me naturally If not me, then who? I was never asked to be one I was never asked to cook

This is a translation by Md. Abu Zafor of Bimal Guha’s “Kalo Biral” from the collection ‘E Kon Matal Nritya' (first published in 2022).