You pull out your pistol, start waving it around. Your woman tells you to put it away. You don’t care; you shoot the deer carcass hanging from the ceiling by the neck. Its hooves connect with my back and I hit the floor. Stop trying to kill me, it isn’t helping your case! Jesus would have a worse time trying to calm you down. You press the muzzle to my temple despite our pleading. Why won’t it be over, let it be over, the missus screams I must survive, so I do.

I yank at your ankle. The gun goes off a second too late, it barely nicks the top of my ear. You fall right as I dive forward. I bang at your wrists. I break the firearm free and rise, my thumb brushing the safety. Don’t do this, please, you’re getting up now. Your wife is either telling me to fire or to stop, I’m not sure anymore. Blood coats us both from foot to nave. Your hair is stringy with the gore of your horrifying treason. I would never have done it to you, yet you did. The trigger has never been this tempting. I hoist the pistol high.

I don’t see your hands inching behind your back. You shoot. The bullet hits me and everything is soaked by sunset’s last shiver. I follow through too, one palm against my abdomen.

You hunch over, a sick dog, wet and scrawny. End it, end it at once, you moan, dig your fingers deep until the memory slicks out of me. Your stare is desperate, your curls plastered to your forehead. It is too pathetic to consider bringing you to bed.

I kiss the barrel and blow your cheek open. You fall facedown into your sins. I double over, too. I’ve never been good at digesting a traitor.

I tend to my queer Muslim community garden and it blooms with all of God’s blessings. I come home to a warm bed and a quiet house that offers me to make me pho because my roommate has accidentally bought too much beef. I write and write and write and almost lose myself in the desperate act of fighting to keep another’s attention, because who am I without keeping my heart vulnerable for those who would rather run than cherish my love? A ex-friend comes back into my life and tells me not a day has gone by where she has not thought of me.

I can tell a joke and make a whole room roar with laughter. I stick out my tongue at my comrade’s finger when he tries to poke my nose. I panic about a potential pest infestation in my cabinets and my community comes running with Windex and a dream. I am lauded for my academic prowess and ambition by professors whose eyes crease with joy when I stop by their offices to say hello. My future is brighter than anything I could have imagined while pretending to derive pleasure from assimilation.

One day I’ll flee to the city all writers salivate over and spend my days traveling the world. I’ll grow old and settle in the Adirondacks with nothing but a pen. I know I will get to those mountains, buried in blankets by the lake while I write, because I am adored for who I am; I adore who I am. There is nothing more liberating than authenticity and to be loved for my kindness, rather than my reputation.

That is enough for me.

i.

And so, Mother Bangla hollered:
‘O, my people—it is time;
change is nigh! These tides 
shall no longer tarry. Verily,
the uprising will come bearing 
the searing might of vengeance. 
O, revolutionaries, how our veins
pulse with pride! Do not back 
down. For this land we must fight, 
for it is this land to which 
our spirits inevitably return!’


ii.

There is a little song that I know. I sing it to the shaheeds in my sleep, wading along the current with my fingers gripping tightly to the hip-dips of my curls. A magpie streaks after me, its mischief tittering to the tune on my tongue. Palms reach up from beneath the water; I kiss all the ones I can, my mouth moving still. The moon will not stop asking me if he ought to repent. Each time, I must tell him that such a thing is not for me to decide.


iii.

Ayan returns to me, limbs beaten and bloodied, the green eked out of his tattered shirt collar, his wide grin twitching like it was suddenly sentient.

“Brother, Bangla has turned red,” he says, each word trapped beneath the crushing heel of breath. 

I inquire what the root of his joy might be if all he brings is word of violence. 

“Our freedom fighters,” Ayan cries, pressing the stringed beads he’s turned to pebbles into my palm, “they live on, my friend! They thought our revolutionaries were forgotten to time, but I have seen them with my own eyes, heard their roars from across our borders! Perhaps they have always been here, tucked away in the hearts of our young. But even as Bangla bleeds, they live on, they live on!”