I Was Once Beautiful
Around the fire, she was a mural; looked down the flames: Girls, this is your bodies, consumes everything it touches— When she looked up, I wondered if gods would ever kill her—she was all seeing: Sit like a girl, and I scissored my legs closed. Yet, you are water; between your legs, a fountain life and death in bed, a river men swim upstream and drown downstream. Grandma! I’d scream. The glaucoma in her eyes didn’t hide her disappointment with me, She’d move her hands to her face, her fingers to catch tired tears … * At fifteen, my chest was a minaret calling men to worship; fire burnt from the pit of my stomach, hot coals and I forgot her words— Educated girls fetch bigger dowry, Uneducated is an oppressed wife But stay in school long enough; the market is cruel to you. And I quit: I was an egg in their hands, each t
