Memories

My memoirs of 2025, do you know I want to forget you?
Breezy January, when you took my grandma away from me
And I had to dig a grave five-feet deep, didn’t you know I would never want to meet you again?
Or dear April, when you stripped away my job, tore apart my savings
And make me surf aimlessly between my rooms,
Didn’t you think I have other months to survive?
Ah! How many dates I now cannot recall, have killed me bit by bit.
They have given me death in a life I cannot live.
Days of no ration and rusted kitchen supplies,
Fear and shame of guests arriving suddenly
And judging my unpreparedness and smelling my insolvency—
Have made July and August the most distasteful.
The days went by, but still the roof held firm. 
The empty kitchen taught us how to stand, 
And in the quiet of that barren year, 
I found a pulse that hunger could not stop.
And now, as you pack your bags to leave and mix quietly in the dark,
Do you know that I want to forget you?
Do memories know, I want to forget them?
 

Iftehaz Yeasir Iftee, a student at IBA, University of Dhaka, is a featured poet in the global anthology Luminance under the pseudonym Brotibir Roy.