father tongue

The Bengali Language Movement was a political movement that began in

what is today known as Bangladesh, in an effort to recognise the use of their

mother tongue as an official language after India’s partition in 1947 and to

retain its writing in the Bengali script.

On 21 February, 1952, the police killed seven students from the University of

Dhaka demonstrating for the movement.

the moon spills seven white

-hot tears over the shore of this sea

-facing city with no beach and

you say your forgiveness is

insurmountable as you make me

stumble over my own mother’s

knees. i paint my tongue with

mustard oil hoping to cough

out her name as you

sneer sympathetically. i am

worth half your soil, my hair

coiling at the edges like all your

goddesses as i watch an old

man painting their scarlet-rimmed

eyes glassy like my plea, his spotted

forehead a reminder of

what could have been

in the arms of my grandfather, for

the weight of an unrecorded riot is not

half as heavy as a ten-year-old big brother’s

broken vow and the God i kneel

before still hasn’t shown me how

to look less like the father you say

has never been mine.