the way there was complete silence when
you lied for the first time. You opened your eyes
scared that the ants 
would hunt them down—egg-white and so
in love with the hurricane lamps your mother
would bring out for your father to fill
with kerosene. You were born
like a waterlogged city, you were 
born with silence in your mouth. You lied
like a city still holding on to the rain,
soaked lamps and the monsoon gods
bleeding. Over time, it will become 
a part of you—that's what the rain
does, your father tells you one day,
drenched on his way home, his shadow
now touching yours, the closest you have been, it lingers.
And then your eyes—egg-white and so
in love with this silence
finds you as
you tell yourself
that this, your eyes and the rain,
must be love.

Raian Abedin is a poet, a student of Biochemistry, and a contributor to The Daily Star.