Chaturdashpodi Kobita
My life began here, Maa begins,
meaning, she wasn’t born
here—she was that young
when first married to Baba. When
dreaming of their hours in a small one-
room space in Sunset Park, I want . . .
what? The train stalls now close to Penn
Station; I’m cold and the placid pond
outside the broad window is no scene
I care to name . . . still, I squint
at these tenements which once
served as sanctuary to Maa & Baba in
those first days. Where now are the secrets
between two strangers who made my eyes?
Copyright © 2026 by Tarfia Faizullah. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 1, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I wrote this poem in real time on ye olde Notes app while on the train with my mother on a trip to New York, my birth city. She (the poem, but perhaps also my mother!) wished to be a sonnet, or at least a predecessor. And who can protest with that which wishes to speak in her own shape?”
—Tarfia Faizullah
Tarfia Faizullah
Tarfia Faizullah was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Bangladeshi parents and raised in Texas. Faizullah is the author of two poetry collections, Registers of Illuminated Villages (Graywolf Press, 2018) and Seam (Southern Illinois University Press, 2014). Her work was anthologized in The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 3: Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket Books, 2019), edited by Fatimah Asghar and Safia Elhillo.