Samira Asma-Sadeque
Image by efes from Pixabay
Samira Asma-Sadeque is a New York-based Bangladeshi journalist, poet, and educator, covering the immigration, mental health, and gender. Her poetry appears in the HBO series Take Out with Lisa Ling, All Arts TV series First Twenty, Button Poetry, and has been featured at the Rubin Museum. She is a Brooklyn Poets fellow, a Tin House alum, and a Best of the Net nominee. She has taught as a guest artist with the Poetry Foundation, as a faculty for the Governor’s School for the Arts in Kentucky, and across different schools in New York through the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, City Lore, and DreamYard Project. She is a recipient of the Ubuntu Educator Award.
Of Daughters
the daughters of elsewhere
are always sending pictures of flowers
to mothers of
here
across a screen, my mother sees the tulips bloom
& exclaims Wow!
These are made for you.
Bouma says Yes when I ask
did you hear from your daughter
Yes she is sending me so many pictures
of spring flowers
what she means is she doesn’t know the right way of saying i miss you / Dhaka
is so loud but the house is silent / the streets
are so full but my insides are hollow / i wish
you would call me more / i wish
the soil beneath our feet / were still made /
of the same dirt
my mother is sending me pictures of her plants,
her garden of tomorrows, she is planting
where her daughters grew / their feet:
she waited for the inevitable & the inevitable happened
like the roots that are now on her soil
her daughters grew / not into
tulips or summer বেলী or lilies / they grew / arms & breasts & hearts they flew
& Ma / Bouma / their mothers watched
as we remained, leaving
for the countries of elsewhere,
where
you cannot grow flowers where
you cannot plant roots.
so when it is summer or spring
the leases have renewed
& new leaves have greened / our streets
& my florist (a man also without roots)
lets me buy daffodils & tulips at a discount,
i send my mother the pictures i say Ma look,
Ma, my flowers have bloomed, the seeds
you planted so many faraways away are arriving
here
inside my home &
it reminds me always
the curves of your palms, how
they planted
বেলী in our
hair
in the summertime
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