My Mother Refuses to Fold

Poetry

Date: July 21, 2026

This poem is an anonymous submission from a 19-year-old college student in Dhaka, written about her mother, a garment worker and single parent now facing retaliation for organising with her colleagues to demand wages they had rightfully earned. 

From the daughter’s perspective, the poem reflects on watching a mother absorb the machinery of intimidation: managers’ threats, the risk of dismissal, police pressure, and the everyday costs of speaking up.

It is a poem about labour and dignity, and about the quiet courage of two women – a worker and her daughter – learning what it means to refuse to fold.

Illustration : Kajol Deorukhkar

My mother irons clothes in a factory in Dhaka.

All day, she stands over steam,

pressing collars flat,

smoothing sleeves,

making shirts look clean

for people who will never know

the pain of her hands.

Maybe the shirts will hang

in bright shops far away.

Maybe someone rich will touch the fabric

and say,

“how beautiful!”

They will not know my mother

stood all day to make it so.

Her wrists burn.

Her back hurts from bending.

Her feet swell inside cheap sandals

bought from the local bazaar.

At night, when she lies down,

her body still remembers the iron –

its weight,

its heat,

its command.

She is a single mother of four children.

Because of this, people think she is alone.

Because of this, men stare too long.

They joke too fast.

They think a woman without a husband

has no wall around her.

But my mother is not alone.

She has us.

Still, we are small.

Too small to stand beside her

when the managers shout.

Too small to answer the police

when they come with questions.

Too small to stop the fear

from entering our house before she does.

She was only asking for her wages.

Money she rightfully earned.

Hour after hour at the ironing table,

until her arm felt less like flesh

and more like the iron

heavy, numb,

made only to press.

• 
  

But when poor women ask

for what is already theirs,

the world hears a threat.

The managers said she was “stirring” the factory.

They said union

the way people say fire,

as if one word

could burn the whole place down.

They said police

as if the law belonged only to them.

They said dismissal.

They said blacklist.

They said,

think of your children.

And that is how they made

our whole house go quiet.

• 
  

That evening, my mother came home

and did not remove her scarf for a long time.

She sat near the stove,

looking at nothing.

My brothers fought over a pencil.

My sister asked if there would be an egg tomorrow.

I opened my college books,

but the words would not stay still.

Equality.

Justice.

Human rights.

In college, these words felt large.

They filled the room.

They stood tall on the page.

At home, they become smaller

the size of the cut on my mother’s finger,

the toffee my sister puts back at the shop,

the way I become smaller

before she even answers the phone.

• 
  

I want to grow tall enough

to stand between her

and every man who thinks she can be threatened.

I want to become a door

that locks from the inside.

I want to become a language

no policeman can bend.

I want to become a paper trail

no manager can bury.

I want to become proof

that my mother was never asking for sympathy.

She was asking for what was hers.

But I am still only her daughter,

sitting under a weak light,

watching her rub oil into her wrists.

• 
  

I ask her,

“Ma, why do they do this

when you only asked for your wages?”

She says,

“Because they are used to us being silent.”

Then she closes her eyes.

And I understand something

I did not learn in college:

Silence is also labour.

It is taken from women every day.

It is stitched into factory walls,

pressed into uniforms,

folded into wage slips,

held over workers

like a lock.

But my mother,

with her burnt fingers

and aching back,

has begun to open

that lock from the inside.

• 
  

The next morning,

she wakes before dawn.

She cooks rice.

She ties her hair tightly

as if preparing for battle.

Before leaving,

she touches my head and says,

“Study well.”

I want to tell her

I am studying.

I am studying her hands.

I am studying her courage.

I am studying the way a woman

can be afraid

and still walk back to the factory gate.

• 
  

My mother irons clothes in Dhaka.

Every day,

she presses other people’s creases flat.

But these days,

something in her refuses to fold.

And when I watch her leave,

I am afraid.

But I know now

that fear is not the only thing

a daughter can inherit.