The Weight Of August Poem by Mohammed Arshad Amin

Nine years carried on frail shoulders,
each calendar page turns like a heavy stone.
August twenty-fifth remains an unhealing wound,
a quiet echo of smoke, running feet,
and the sudden silence of home.

We wander behind green plastic tarps and bamboo fences,
our roots pulled raw from the soil of Arakan.
They called us strangers on the land our ancestors plowed,
tried to wipe our name from the ledger of history,
leaving us to measure life in rations and dust.

Yet identity is not a piece of paper they can burn.
It lives in the tongue we speak to our children,
in the quiet prayers whispered toward the dawn,
in the refusal to forget where we belong.

From the crowded alleys of Cox's Bazar,
we hold up the shards of our truth.
We do not ask for benevolence
we demand justice for the stolen years,
the lost lives and the right to step back
into the sun as who we are.

— Mohammed Arshad Amin