What do you do when the world is ending, ma?
What do you do when it rains?
When clouds are fire and water is blood
And the only fuel, pain?
I feel my rage, ma, a living thing;
A beast, caged, like me.
It was birthed in the darkest
Dark of night,
It's howl, a vow to be free.
It waits, ma. It holds my hand
And counts the falling stones.
And in the hour when dragons sleep,
It keeps away the cold.
What do I do, to keep you warm
Now that baba sleeps?
Now that our home is a carcass, where
Little girls haunt, and little boys weep?
Sometimes I hear them in my dreams, ma.
I hear their quiet pleas
For the world to wake, and undo
What God has thus decreed.
Could I ask Him why, ma?
Could I ask him why baba is sleeping?
Under the rubble, under the trees
Heaven or earth, he is not with me.
Could I ask Him why, God's mercy is sweet
But at the cost of life, so green?
I think, ma, I will not wake
Because God must be angry with me.
Angry gods and angry men
Are at the door, ma. Sleep.

Wasima Aziz is an amateur writer living in Chattogram, who recently finished her HSC exams.