Poetry : Nameless 

Author : Ahmed Mostofa Faisal

Country : Bangladesh 🇧🇩

I am nameless, yet I remain awake.

I never truly had a name.

My father called me ‘that girl'.

My husband wanted only a silent body.

And society?

It searched for religious fear even in the curve of my brow.

I was born behind a curtain

where tears meant virtue and desire meant sin.

Slowly I learned

my chest was a threat to your god,

my gaze a trial for your soul, 

You fear the knowledge within my body

because it refuses your rule.

You wanted me to learn how to fall silent,

how to walk with lowered eyes, hiding my smile,

how to perform consent instead of living love.

You do not know, when a woman grows quiet,

a civilization forms inside her body,

one day igniting into fire

and rising with the question, 

‘Who am I?’

I am that question

Which makes every scripture tremble.

I am that cry that history cannot contain.

I did not only wish to survive, I dared to ask who I am.

Who am I for? Am I enough for myself

No one ever told me my desire was mine,

my will was mine, my silence was mine.

even my unspoken words are a language 

this civilization refuses to hear.

I stand beyond every command, 

every command, every rule, every explanation.

From non-being, I now give birth to myself

in every voice, in every calling.

I am no longer the good girl. 

I am no longer a machine for motherhood.

I am not only a lover.

I am the woman

who is her own first love, 

Her own first rebellion, her own first goddess.

Inside my chest now 

flows not just a river but a continent.

A land where women is not only body

but a complete map, 

where the language of freedom

is taught from the very first cry.

I am that woman 

who exists in no story, 

Yet from whom every story begins.