got my chakra

got my chair

eyes are going

can’t tell one from the other

keep trying to sit and

falling out of

enlightenment

What Became of Me

Your smallest word is enough—
just that little whisper,
yet it comes like a Boishakhi storm
braided with torrents of rain.

It flows in an unbroken current,
through ages beyond memory,
stirring silent uproars
deep within my chest.

Laughter and tears descend together,
like rain bending every vine,
every shrub, every tree.
Nature itself becomes
a heavenly message of grace,

finding its way
into the lightless, blind corridor.
Who is left to notice?

Across the grey horizon,
along an endless untamed trail,
someone suddenly asks,

“How have you been?”

That single sentence
casts its spell over everything.
Like the fragrance of dawn
breaking an ancient silence,

something within me—
something beyond words—
quietly becomes
something else.

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh

08  July, 2026.

Md. Mahbubul Alam is from Bangladesh. His writer name is Mahbub John in Bangladesh. He is a Senior Teacher (English) of Harimohan Government High School, Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh. Chapainawabganj is a district town of Bangladesh. He is an MA in English Literature from Rajshahi College under National University. He has published three books of poems in Bangla. He writes mainly poems but other branches of literature such as prose, article, essay etc. also have been published in national and local newspapers, magazines, little magazines. He has achieved three times the Best Teacher Certificate and Crest in National Education Week in the District Wise Competition in Chapainawabganj District. He has gained many literary awards from home and abroad. His English writings have been published in Synchronized Chaos for seven years.

Once when he was in grade ten in 1990, his Bangla letter was selected as the best one from Deutsche Welle, Germany Radio that broadcast Bangla news for the Banglalee people. And he was given 50 Dutch Mark as his award. They would ask letters from the listeners to the news in Bangla and select one letter for the best one in every month.     

From 17 to 30 September, in 2018 he received a higher training in teaching English language in Kasetsart University of Thailand for secondary level students through a government order from education ministry. 

On 06 November 2015 he achieved Amjad Ali Mondal Medal for his contribution in education field by a development organization in the conference and felicitation function for the honorable personalities at Rajshahi College Auditorium. 

On 30 December 2017 from West Bengal in India he was declared a ‘Literary Charioteer’ in Bangobandhu Literary and World Bango Conference and they awarded him with a Gold Medal in their International Literary Conference and Prize Giving Ceremony.

In 2018, he achieved Prodipto Lirerary Award in Prodipto Literary Conference at Kesorhat, Rajshahi for poems in Bangla literature. He received honorary crest from the administration of Chapainawabganj District Literary Conference and Cultural Function in 2021 and 2022 consecutively. 

His poems have been published in many international online magazines such as Juntos Por las L Raven Cage Zine, and Area Felix.  His poems have been translated and published in Argentine and Serbian, and he participated in many international online cultural meetings. 

Philosophical Reflection on Love

Gaurav Ojha

After having read various philosophical works, I have come to realize that the scope of philosophy is not just limited to all that difficult stuff great philosophers write. Philosophy is not just an academic pursuit; it serves as a daily analytical tool that prompts us to question, reflect, and uncover the larger context behind the various aspects of our lives. Hence, anything from an intense political debate to a personal dialogue with your lover on the turgid matters of falling and being in love can be quite philosophical.

For an analogy, just hold yourself and think for a while when your lover asks you the next time, “Do you really love me?” Instead of answering the question bluntly, you need to analyze and reflect on his or her concern for a while and then ask yourself, what does love really mean? Why do we fall in love? Is love about giving things, holding hands, or something deeper? Why is she asking this question? Is she insecure? Is she in love with me for what I have or who I am? Now ponder over these thoughts for a while and what you are doing is the philosophy of love. After reflecting on these questions, you may feel that even a familiar thing like being in love carries so many concerns, questions, and enigmas.

Perhaps too much has already been said about love, from poems, essays and bulky philosophical treatises to the complex plots of novels reflecting on its complex, contradictory and inexplicable nature. And, among many such reflections on love, I find French philosopher Jacques Derrida’s thoughts on the paradoxical nature of love rather philosophically intriguing. When asked to say something about love, rather than answering the question, Derrida simply obscures the question itself and makes the idea of love look rather odd by exposing the paradox between what we love and who we love.

Derrida argues that before we say anything about love, first we need to reflect on our ways of loving, whether we love each other for who she is (her being) or for what he has (his possessions). Are we in love with the right person (who), or does that person have all the right possessions we need and want to be in love with? Here “being” reflects who a person is as an individual, how her life speaks, and a sense of joy, laughter, support, transparency of thoughts, and inner connections you experience in her presence, whereas “having” indicates what a person owns in terms of accumulations, possessions, opportunities, purchasing power, social security, and control.

In our idealist imaginations we want to presume that we always love the person before his/her possessions; however, in reality we are also evenly aware that probably we are in love with the person for his/her physical attributes, social status, skills, knowledge, influence, and other material possessions. The joy of philosophizing about love lies not in finding answers, but in exercising our minds, posing questions, and analyzing the familiar experience of falling in love from various unexpected angles, all with the aim of expanding our understanding of that passionate and whimsical phenomenon we refer to as love.

(Ojha is a faculty member specializing in communication, critical thinking and research at various educational institutions in the Kathmandu Valley)

Wet Stars

I lean against the wall.

The sky is half torn open —

stars threading through broken cloud,

rain falling like it can’t decide

whether to drown the night

or just wash it.

The streetlamps along the sidewalk flicker,

surrendering one bulb at a time.

Below them, the puddles hold

whatever’s left of the sky —

a smear of starlight and headlight,

no longer telling which is which.

Then she arrives.

The rain doesn’t care that she’s coming.

It falls exactly as it would

on an empty street.

Her hand reaches me

before her face does —

a cigarette held loose between two fingers,

nails long, lacquered a green so bright

it cuts through the rain

from half a block away.

She lifts the cigarette,

and for a second

its ember is the one star

on this street

that isn’t drowning —

small, orange, only hers.

I hear her

before I see her shoes —

ankle boots, leather, six centimeters of heel,

striking the wet ground

like small, deliberate clocks.

Her coat is long,

black leather, soaked through,

and it doesn’t shine

so much as exhale —

the smell of rain

caught in old hide,

each step releasing a little more

of the storm she’s already walked through.

She doesn’t slow down.

She walks straight toward me

never breaking stride.

She sits down beside me.

The smell of it pulls

something loose in me —

two months ago, my uncle paid me

not in money

but in a leather coat,

worn soft by someone else’s years,

and I carried it home

like a small fortune.

My brother saw it

before I’d even hung it up.

“Will you give it to me?”

And I did —

the way you hand over

the one warm thing you own

without quite deciding to.

I watched him wear it.

I watched it become his —

like an old door

I keep forgetting is there,

until tonight, when it opened again,

beside her, in the rain.

II

Her fingers find my hand,

slow, like she’s not entirely sure

she’s allowed to.

We don’t talk.

We just look.

Then, without deciding to, she leans in.

Smoke and the chemical

sweetness of her lipstick

reach me before she does,

mixing into something

that isn’t quite a smell anymore.

When the gap between us

runs out of room,

her mouth finds mine,

and I swear the stars hung lower,

trapped between the buildings, blurred by rain,

close enough to mistake for witnesses.

Then it’s over.

We pull apart too fast,

the way you let go

of something hot

before you’ve decided if it burned you.

She goes one way.

I go the other —

walking home under the same wet sky.

III

By morning,

the puddles that held the sky

are dry again —

no trace of the stars

mistaken for witnesses,

no trace of us.

The city had room enough

for the rain.

It never had room

for us against the wall.

——————————————-

When Little Boys Fall in Love

Age 5 — The Sand Kiss

You hated it when someone

kissed your nose.

I buried you deep

in warm sand,

then stole a kiss

beneath the sky.

The waves kept our secret.

Age 6 — First Light

Your nails chewed down

to rosy tips,

sorting bottle caps

with quiet concentration.

You gave me your father’s crown.

I slipped it silently

into my pocket.

Age 7 — The Promise

Beneath sheets stretched

between two chairs,

your breath smelled sweet.

You whispered in the cotton dark:

“Promise our hands will never part.”

Age 8 — First Mercy

Gravel dug deep into my palm.

You kissed the stones away,

the sting turning calm.

Salt and copper on my skin—

your tender lips

made healing begin.

Age 9 — The Communion

You bit the apple,

passed it to me.

I held those tooth marks

like sacred things.

We rode our bikes

at nine each morning,

the air cool,

the streets empty.

When cousins came,

I told them I was busy.

“You might come tomorrow,” you said.

I turned away,

stubborn with pride.

Age 10 — The Fracture

“He throws things

when the bottle’s empty.”

You traced the rusted gate

with careful fingers.

Your voice cracked

like old hinges.

I counted my heartbeats—

sharp, cold—

not knowing yet

what to do

with someone else’s pain.

Age 11 — The Shift

Two knocks: your father.

Three knocks: safe.

But when they cornered me

at school,

you looked away.

I stood there long

after they had gone,

waiting for you to turn back.

You didn’t.

That was the day I learned

that love and courage

are not always

the same thing.

Age 12 — The Breaking

Your mother combed your hair

on Sunday mornings,

pressed you close.

“They say boys like us shouldn’t—”

You stopped.

Looked at the window.

As if the word itself

had weight

you couldn’t carry.

Age 13 — The Aftermath

I passed your house at dawn.

Counted steps since you were gone—

forty-seven to the old front tree

where you used to yawn

beneath the sky.

The moving truck came Thursday morning.

Your mother waved.

My heart broke quietly.

Inside the tree, I found your note—

three words in your handwriting,

the letters uneven,

pressed hard into the paper

like you meant them to last:

I’m sorry. Goodbye.

Coda — Forty Years Later

Sometimes I wake to phantom knocks—

two, then three, then silence.

If I could ride

those streets again,

I’d knock—two, then three—

and wait.

Not to explain.

Not to forgive.

Just to let the boy

behind the door

know that I remember—

every tooth mark,

every promise,

every morning

we chose each other

before the world

taught us not to.

The crown.

The apple.

The rusted cap.

Inside the house,

a boy

holding the door

a second longer

than necessary.

Alone in the Crowd

On the bus, people stand so close to one another that their breaths mix. And yet no one looks at anyone. Every eye is on a phone, every ear plugged with earbuds, every face wearing the quiet expression of someone who has grown used to being a stranger. This scene, I think, is the clearest portrait of the modern city: thousands of people in one square, and still, each one locked inside their own small cage.

When people talk about loneliness, they usually picture an old man living alone, or someone forgotten in a remote village. But today loneliness wears a different face — it sits among crowds, in the workplace, even at the family dinner table. A young man with hundreds of “friends” online who doesn’t know who to call in the evening; a woman who talks to dozens of people all day at the office, yet comes home to find no one asking how she is — these are the ordinary heroes of our time.

The causes of this can’t be traced to a single thing. Cities have grown larger, but courtyards have shrunk. Work has sped up, leaving no time for conversation. We tell ourselves the phone connects us to the whole world, yet more often than not it pulls us away from the person standing right beside us. When someone brings this up, others wave it off — “that’s just how the times are.” But the times didn’t become this way on their own. We built them this way, day by day, by putting off the time we owe each other.

The saddest part is that this loneliness is usually invisible. It doesn’t shout, doesn’t ask for help. It smiles, goes to work, posts a cheerful photo online. That’s exactly why it’s so hard to notice — neither the person carrying it nor those around them realize it right away. A person can live in this state for a long time, only facing the truth of it at night, once everyone else has gone to sleep.

This is not a problem that can be solved by a single law or a single initiative. But it can start with small things. Greeting a neighbor. Asking a coworker “how are you” and actually meaning it. Setting the phone aside and listening to someone until they finish speaking. These may seem like nothing, but they are the simplest way of telling another person: you are not invisible.

Perhaps all of us — at least once — have been that person: walking through a crowd, feeling as though no one could see us. And it’s exactly that experience that should remind us: the person next to us might be feeling the very same thing. Sometimes the greatest help isn’t a long speech or a grand solution — it’s simply one honest, caring glance.

Amonboyeva Shahnoza, student at Urgench State University, Computer Engineering

ALCHEMY OF PEACE

It is not the silence that extinguishes, but the fire that stills,

the way in which the ashes still hold the warmth of the embers.

You are the vessel where pain, poured little by little,

loses its sharp edges, becomes water that does not break.

Loss is not an abyss that swallows the light,

it is the earth turned over, deep, ready to receive.

I sowed memories like grains, not to ask for your return,

but to see what we had grow, into roots that do not die.

Here, where the river of anguish widens and slows,

I find that peace is not reaching a distant shore,

but learning to navigate even when the water moves,

taking you with me, light as the air I breathe.

We are this slow alchemy: what was, transforms,

does not disappear, changes shape, becomes part of me.

 And so, we walked together, now weightless, without farewell,

with the calm of a stone that knows how to be part of the path.

GRACIELA NOEMI VILLAVERDE is a writer and poet from Concepción del Uruguay (Entre Rios) Argentina, based in Buenos Aires She graduated in letters and is the author of seven books of poetry, awarded several times worldwide. She works as the World Manager of Educational and Social Projects of the Hispanic World Union of Writers and is the UHE World Honorary President of the same institution’s Activa de la Sade, Argentine Society of Writers. She is the Commissioner of Honor in the executive cabinet in the Educational and Social Relations Division of the UNACCC South America – Argentina Chapter.