Your grief rusts the ancient pipes, and rotting awnings over cracked windows. It flows through your bowels and seeps out onto the pavement. Every day, there's a puddle forming by the time the sun hangs low on the horizon. 

Your grief rots the decades old paint and the lakhri no one bothered to replace. Even across the road, it reeks of death.

Perhaps you hold onto memories of the old, when wives wept as one, and men went to war for the country, to war against themselves. Perhaps the rot pervading in their slurred words and heavy breathing never quite left your walls, no matter the layers of paint or mildew.

Take care, old friend. There was a time when your rooms echoed with the laughter of children, as the smell of khichuri wafted through your halls. When, after all the children were put to bed, mothers, fathers, uncles and aunts sat around that ancient dinner table; the mirth in that room more than made up for the kids' going to bed. Those children dreamt dreams of you and are dreaming still.

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