‘Diary’: Sehri Tales selections, Day 18
TRIGGER WARNING: suicide
I.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. March 11, 2010
I lost my 36 colour box today. Dad bought it for me, maybe he couldn't afford another one this year. I cried for three hours. Should I tell them? Is Allah punishing me for not being good?
December 30, 2014
I missed A+ in JSC. No one scolds me though. It's like everyone expected something that I couldn't give them properly, I failed again.
July 15, 2015
Today I threw away my sketch notebook. For months I drew those dresses in hopes to become a fashion designer one day. Maybe it's just a random dream, I should definitely listen to dad.
November 12, 2021
I'm sitting in dad's room, crying and thinking about how to remove my existence forever. It's weird how Dad doesn't know someone out there broke his little daughter's heart today.
December 02, 2022
Well good news, I fell in love again.
April 10, 2023
It's been a while since I came to write here. It's always been a pleasure to write where no one judges, nothing to hide or not afraid to say anything. For a couple of days I've been missing my Nana. It's weird, I saw him yesterday. It's been almost seven years since he died. Was it my guilt to not to be able to see him before his departure or was it my urge to join him there? So It's my last entry in the diary. It's been a while now, I should take a long nap.
by Mumtahina Tisha
II.
"Dear Diary,
Is it so unbecoming of me to want to live alone and roam alone when everyone thinks I should settle down? There are just so many places I want to see! I want to spend hours browsing bookshops in New York. I want to curse the sudden rain in London, walk through the steep alleyways in Seoul, and drive up the hillsides in Tuscany. But first of all, Paris. Oh to lazily glance at the Seine on a summer afternoon! I know, I know, "What a first-world dream for some girl living with third-world problems", right? But hey! Dreams don't cost us anything, do they? Maybe I'll come back to these pages years later and laugh at how childishly dreamy I was at 21. Until then, let's just pretend that all of this can come true."
With a smile on her face, Nazia puts the diary back into her purse. Glancing at the Seine she murmurs, "Happy 41st birthday, Nazia! One down, four more to go."
by Sanim Subah
III.
WOLVES (ACT VI)
I've given time to nurture obscurity in my expression
Like the sweaty-toothed madman Dead Poets spoke of,
And picked up words that lay around me in abandoned conversations
Like broken remnants of wood from a forgotten carpenters' passed over masterpiece--
A thief on a mission
With his sack of white lies.
I befriended an innocent diary and his cheap stationeries,
Willing to bare my heart and the countless pensive affairs
In different shades of golden blue.
Hoping,
In return,
My "Dear diary" paints me too.
But these pages, my love,
Unlike Selkirk's Friday,
In the most marooned shade of Sinatra blue,
Remained plain
In speech,
Whispering folklore
About
What might've been lost.
by Asif Hassan
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