Recipe of Survival and Sustenance
written by: Marzia Rahman
@MarziaR57167805
Switch on your sunny face.
Put red lipstick, red bindi and smile.
Cut out the corpses of meaningless confrontations.
Add concealer on your bruised cheek. This is not the first time, and you fear it may not be the last.
Take some time to think, to reevaluate. Rekindle the hopes you buried long ago and grow some courage.
Mix self-love and confidence together.
Stir in flames of pride and rage.
When and if self-doubt creeps in, turn the flame higher.
Bring a trusted friend and a fierce lawyer.
Pour the newly attained self-belief in a brightly hand-painted bowl.
Decorate with edible sunshine flowers.
Serve divorce paper, sprinkled with sugar-coated terms.
Marzia Rahman is a Bangladeshi writer and translator. Her flashes have appeared in 101 Words, Postcard Shorts, Five of the Fifth, The Voices Project, The Pangolin Review, Fewerthan500.com, WordCity Literary Journal, Red Fern Review, Dribble Drabble Review, Paragraph Planet, Six Sentences, Academy of the Heart and Mind, Potato Soup Journal, Borderless Journal, The Antonym, Flash Fiction Festival Four and Writing Places Anthology UK. Her novella-in-flash Life on the Edges was longlisted in the Bath Novella-in-Flash Award Competition in 2018. 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. Her translations have appeared in a number of anthologies. Her translation of Syed Shamsul Haq’s The Aftermath (Ditiyo Diner Kahini) has been published by ULAB Press in 2022. Rahman is currently working on a collaborative translation project on Shahaduz Zaman’s Ekjon Komlalebu and Saleha Chowdhury’s Ekjon Jushnara’s Galpa. She is working on a series of flashes too. She is also a painter.
Latest posts by Marzia Rahman (see all)
- The Paradoxical Journey of Translation - June 20, 2024
- A Mother Makes A Call, A Daughter Waits - February 5, 2024
- Recipe of Survival and Sustenance - September 28, 2023
