Alison Karki, Grade 12
UWC-USA
Published in Skipping Stones Inc. October-December 2020 Issue (2020 Youth Honors Award Winner)
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To celebrate womxn
wind plays with her hair she laughs, embracing the thrill; a brief moment, free. --liberation i stand up again, grit my teeth and take deep breaths-- for i am woman. --resilience through my dark, brown eyes, lashes collecting my tears. i notice your strength. --from one girl to another painted “pink” for war? “delicate” hands clenched and raised-- don’t worry, we bite. --do not downplay our strength My Mother’s Tongue My mother swallowed her mother’s tongue. Their tongues are razor-sharp deadly poisonous-- hissing at the generation of men that have disrespected them. But their tongues are the damp soil needed for their delicate words to germinate and grow. Their cracked tongues jab and sting like swarms of honey bees, but only the sharpest tongues can produce the sweetest words that ooze out and flow like warm honey. I recite their precious words; my mouth being the furnace that transforms my tongue into piercing shards of broken pottery and my words being the glue that mends the pieces back together. And every time I think I have lost my tongue given to me by my mother (and my mother’s mother), the sharp stinging resurfaces-- and their words pour out of me again. taken seriously maybe if i masked my melanin with whiteness-- painted over the chocolate soil of my land and replaced it with pale sand-- maybe then i could be taken seriously. maybe if i masked my femininity with manliness and “machismo”-- concealed my so-called vulnerability with erupted aggression and dissolved my womanly curves and bouncy breasts and drenched myself in toxic masculinity maybe then i could be taken seriously. i just wish for once i could be taken seriously. i wish i wish i wish i am made of revolution i am made of revolution. my father taught me strength my mother taught me affection my friends taught me vulnerability life taught me execution lines of poetry flow every time i exhale passion in every cry light dims in my eyes every time my brothers and sisters die my ancestors had calluses (my great-grandfather had unhealing scars & my grandfather had permanent cracks in their skin) so that my skin could be shea-butter smooth but i will continue to work hard because i want to see those who come after me-- my daughters & sons & children-- win. i want to watch the entire system burn down and i want the world to hear the sound. |
Guest Writer - UWC-USA |
