AMINA’S CRY; WITH ONE STROKE, TRADITION HAS TURNED MY SLEEP INTO DEATH

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I am going on a journey, I have never been
Going to a place I have never seen
Will I be allowed the courtesy of a last meal?
But they just stared at me as if I am acting a script
Please…. I’m still a teen who has a lot to see and places to be
But they all still stirred with amazement including my parents
As I was lead as lamb to be slaughtered on the altar of marriage
To a man old enough to be my father.

Mama said nothing because in her days
At a much younger age, she went through the same
And because history is written on a tablet no one can erase
I am doomed to hang by the same rope others before me dangled from

Mama’s only words of consolation was “time heal all wounds”
But I don’t want this wound or the scar it will turn into
Which in time might fade
I just want to live a normal teen life
But who cares about what I want
Or what any other girl at my age wants
When the voices and aspirations of women
In this part of the country is nonexistent

He promised my virginity he won’t take
Not until I’m at least twenty
As if this justifies it all
Making it lawful and acceptable in this insane world
But that night, my blood turned the white bed sheet red
Like the biblical river Nile in the account of mosses

I showered trying to scrub him off me
But his hands are imprinted on my soul and water can not erase
Even the best of soaps was no good
I never knew, the eyes could run dry of tears
Until mine stopped flowing
How do I speak to those who are too deaf to listen?
Too blinded by the old ways of their ancestors to see

I am Amina
Crying out with a silent but loud voice
For I have fallen prey to the deepest grief and melancholy
And With one rapid stroke
Tradition has turned my sleep into death.