BEING A WOMAN
-Nidhi Karingula
I yearn to tell you a story of this world so wretched,
Of these scars you see and others deeply etched.
My empty soul is painfully perishing,
As I am imprisoned in my own being.
Listen.
I was starved for my brethren’s hunger,
And worked with a whip to my skin,
I was left to decipher words with wonder,
Education was a privilege only to male kin.
I was given hope of a new home and another life,
This is your love and future, I was told.
You will be their daughter and his lovely wife,
I believed the lie as I was treacherously sold.
“Dowry!” they screamed with ruthless mirth,
I had not brought riches along with me here.
I was burnt on a blazing pyre for my worth,
As I screamed silently to a deaf ear.
I was bought, I was sold, I was beaten and left.
Yet, I do not fear for my own life you see,
I have another in my womb waiting bereft,
For what this world will also leave it to be.
I sit alone in this cell, whispering to her,
“This is what you will see if you come”.
Shall I commit a sin of killing another?
Or will she tell her own story, as a victim?
Listen.