Raise Your Voice

raise it as if your life depends on it. Your future too.

Scream if needed. Scream even if your voice cracks.

Don’t wait for help, help yourself.

Learn to survive, and remember,

the young neighbor who cries every night,

a distant cousin with a broken arm, a young girl on the bus, with bruised marks.

Remember the scars, the burns, the pain, the losses too.

Read the silence, the untold stories behind every closed door.

Then write a new story, draw a new picture,

paint your toenails red, wear a bindi, go out and shout

Shout until you are heard.

From Guest Contributor Marzia Rahman

Marzia is a Bangladeshi fiction writer and translator. Her writings have appeared in several print and online journals. Her novella-in-flash If Dreams had wings and Houses were built on clouds was longlisted in the Bath Novella in Flash Award Competition in 2022.She is currently working on a novella. She is also a painter.