A Woman’s Existence In the Hands Of Man
They told us to serve the man, hide our faces, to bear all the children
till our bodies stretched so much that all that was left was
a pile of organs, loosened muscles, and bones ground to dust.
We cried for our mothers and our daughters and our sisters
wondering and wailing why they had come into our world–
a world that served only those with a filling between their legs.
Our husbands cried for their unborn sons,
impregnating us in hopes of more.
What more could they want?
A whole army of boys who’ll only grow to fill the holes of women,
trapping them -us- in an endless cycle?
No reprieve from the incessant wails of needy infants.
Boys who enclosed their mouths around the stiff peaks of their
mother’s breasts grow with a hunger to go out and conquer the world,
while our girls, whose fingers once wrapped around the hairs of their mothers,
now clutch the handles of brooms sweeping the floor from age five.
We have no reprieve to the constant needs of our children,
but our husbands go out with freedom whipping through their hair.
Their rough hands -which later roam our sore body at night-
reflect the opportunities they are given.
The roughness of our hands are much more brittle,
dry as the very life is sucked out from the lines that map our palms.
So, tell me, men, the children of a so-called God,
how should I believe in all these religions that only
constrain me in terms of my mind, but free me in
terms of how much my body must withstand in the hands of you?
Tell me, how much longer should I suffer watching my daughter
and my mother work like dogs in the hands of both father and son?
As a woman in a world where I am limited as a person
due to fullness of my hips and the existence of my breasts,
tell me why I should succumb to every demand of the man
that does nothing but feel important due to my dependence?