I.

Dear Ma, 
It's my birthday today, though no one really celebrates it anymore. But don't worry. It's not just for me. No one celebrates birthdays at all in this house after... well you know what.
I wish I could've known you. Your loss is apparent in this house even after all these years. It's evident how you used to be the life of the party, the thread tying everything together. 
I think we could have been friends. Even if you weren't my mother. Then again, I suppose, if you weren't my mother you would still be alive. 
I hope I don't seem bitter. I'm really not. But sometimes when I can't find where I put my blue dress with the polka dots, or when I don't have someone nagging me to eat before I go out to college, I get really sad. 
I can't remember the last time I had breakfast. 
Anyways, if there's any solace I am ought to find about all of this, because you always have to tame grief to make it more palpable for the people around you, it's that your last words were the first ones I heard.

by Faiza Ramim 

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‘Street’: Sehri Tales selections, Day 14

II.

Abhisekh is getting ready for his office while I am slumped in my bed, neither sleeping nor awake. The jingling of rings is very off-key today, but I am still cherishing it. This is the last sound I'll be hearing in this apartment until he returns at the end of the day.
Mornings like this are usual nowadays. He leaves, and I drown in the quietness of the bed. I can hear myself breathing while drifting down the lane of memories. So sometimes I even stop inhaling for a while. 

The ticking clock hanging in the top left corner of the room is an antique piece collected during my Turkey trip. I liked everything about it until one day, when I scrapped off its batteries turning it into a mere piece of show. For a while, I felt alive again that day, just like I used to feel right after closing my shows. Abhi and the rest of the team would eagerly wait behind the doors of the studio until I played the last bumper before going off-air. And at the end of every show they would say, "Your words create magic, and your voice casts a spell."

What was the last bumper I ever played on-air?

What were the last words I uttered before losing my voice to paralysis?

by Sushmita Sruti 

III.

3:00 am / 10:00 pm
Hours apart
Oceans too
Speaking through blurry screens
And mangled headphones
Laughing
Crying
Dancing
I can hear half the words
But feel all the love
Can see only in 360p
But know even 4K wouldn't be enough 
To do your presence justice 
Yet as the night draws to a lull
And our emotions are siphoned dry
I still stare at you in front of me
Tiny, cracked, smudged
Hoping I could be breathing the same air as you
Smelling your favorite perfume
And doing everything best friends do
But as always
The world outside our screens call
And time demands our surrender
We allow our eyelids to collapse
And our words to become sparse 
As my stomach rumbles
And your food grows cold
And I depart with my last words
"Please remember to eat."

by Rafid Khandaker