By: Mubashira Jaweed
View all Mubashira Jaweed's works
I hope like it would dominate the time.
As if the cadence of fear that time sweats
when it sees hope is the same species of fear
that has developed inside of me while living in time
and suffocating as it lives.
more like I am a vermeer,
and the waves of hope are my only authoritative friends,
heart-latched to the screaming of people who drowned.
But a hope that is the sea itself, and I am the stilled waves in it
is that many womanhood’s rights shouldn’t diminish
just for the sake of their maternity.
I am frightened by my mom’s decision to stay in an obliterated state
just so I can wish to escape from it everyday.
Cause I am a woman too.
And a house that couldn’t respect a woman
can neither be a home for other women
nor should be a place for them to slaughter one
just because they had lived under a sword themselves.