ODE TO THE GIRL CHILD

Nine months of bated trepidation

You await your birth with plenteous anxiety
Unsure of your welcome’s nature
If welcome you’ll eventually be
And wisdom says: enjoy the wait
For the luxuries you now savor
May be your best in years to come

At last your birth-hour dawns

And in love-hated pain
You taste life’s light
Buoyed forth in your pool of bloody glory
“It’s a girl,” cackles the silvered midwife
Her toothless gums
Your first sight in Earth-Dom

Suddenly, a voice reminiscent

Of your mother’s womb-land
Growls a heart-wrenching rejoinder
That will haunt your every day
“Oh shit, why?”
What back then was a mystery to grasp
Now by the process of years
Becomes crystal-clear

As you kneel by the grinding stone

And watch your brother
Again school-bound
Proudly accompanied
By your father’s loving pat
Understanding dawns in finer hew

And as the pepper yields to the fiery grate

Of your grinding stone
It sings in painful notes
Your ill-composed dirge
You are a girl … you are not a boy
Had you been a boy …had you been..

Your father’s voice gallops in

From the far horizons
Of your fervid thoughts
With seething menace
And those miserable words
It cuts your heart all over again
“Oh shit why?”

Come now little girl

Brazen up wont you?
It is early yet to embrace melancholy
Yea, you have served your brother well
And now though a tender shoot
Must serve a husband too

So with three hours to grow

By a bargain struck at your very birth
You are dolled-up and shipped-off
To old Hassan’s bed

Your mother though stricken

Can scarce lift a limb
For in cruel-same manner
She married your sire
She tells you of duty
And warns you behave
For with your dower-sum
Will her lord’s debt be paid

So hapless you setout

A good wife to be
And quickly encountered
Your lord’s lust and fist
In triple-scalding pain
You brought-forth his seed
Your tender-shoot shriveled
Your scars go unhealed

Now suffering the stigma

Of a widow at youth
The worst yet unfolds
As you’re named sorceress too
For though Hassan’s tree-fall
Was a debt owed to wine
They claim still you killed him
And must speak your guilt

But how else to show all

Your innocence plain
Save drinking the vile broth
Of your husband’s washed remains
In seven days they claim
Shall your guilt find you out
But alas your innocence is powerless
To save you from germs.