No Land To Call My Own

She came from Lahore,
a girl wrapped in crimson silk,
eyes brimming with songs,
to marry a man of the valley—
Kashmiri by soil,
by snow,
by the lullabies of Lidder and Jhelum.

She gave him children—
one son,
three daughters—
raised them under walnut boughs,
in a house steeped in noon prayers
and the scent of simmering dal.

One daughter—
sent back across the border,
wed to a cousin in her mother’s city.
A son, a daughter born,
then a silence colder than exile—
divorce.

No arms in Lahore wide enough,
no door left unbarred,
she returned
to Kashmir—
to her mother’s weary sighs,
her father’s wordless gaze,
and the hollow of dreams undone.

Another marriage—
brief, brittle—
left her with a son
before vanishing like winter sun.

She tried again—
because what do women do
but try again?
A man, a house, two more children,
one daughter, one son.
She built a life from splinters,
stitched a home from refusal,
fed them rice and resolve,
taught them the language of grit.

She schooled them—
each child cloaked in hope,
sent into the world
with books,
blessings,
and her trembling prayers.

Then—
a letter.
A cold, creased verdict:

You do not belong.
Leave.
Go to Pakistan.

But where?
To whom?
The Lahore she knew is dust.
The faces—ghosts.
The threshold she once crossed
now bricked shut by years.

Her children weep,
their mother named foreign
in the land she carried
in her bones,
in her breath,
in the lullabies she sang over their sleep.

Today, she stands—
not with tears (they have long dried),
but with the quiet of a woman unmade,
a stranger in the only home
she ever knew.

Tell me—
where does a mother go
when the earth itself forgets
her name?

—MyKoul