IDPs of Manipur

Premananda Mangsataba
They call us displaced ----
but this is our land.
The hills, the rivers, the red earth-----
they remember our footsteps
even when the world forgets our names.

We did not leave;
We were torn away------
by flames that spoke in gunfires,
by fear that were familiar fares.
Our homes became smoke,
Our memories --- ashes carried by the wind.

Now, we live in camps of waiting.
Children draw houses of plastic sheets,
Mother cook silence over shared stoves,
And father count the nights
Instead of the harvests.
We sleep beneath tarpaulin skies,
dreaming of doors that open both ways.

The world calls it "relief".
We call it survival----
a borrowed life,
Stitched together with longing.
Every morning, we rise
not for hope, but for duty-----
To remember who we are
Before the ground beneath us cracked.

And yet-----
Somewhere between the loss and living.
We still plants flowers beside the tents.
Because even exile cannot erase
the love of our land.

We are the heart still beating,
Outside the body of Manipur
We are not gone.
We are waiting -------
For peace ,
For return ,
For home.