To be a woman:

To be a woman is to bleed.
From between our legs, as young as nine, when the only worry in our young minds should be about scraped knees from riding bikes and scooters, the visceral meaning of womanhood begins to leak through the soft cotton amour of childhood.
The impending doom of what could be warded off by a child's imagination has cracked and no longer can be repaired.
This is the fate of a woman.
From that day we bleed.
Shoving gauze of soft smiles and politeness into bullet holes bore into our bodies by men.
Anything to stop the bleeding and remain a fragment of the person we once were.
We’re blithe in the presence of grown men that become aroused to the notion of humiliating us.
We try to feign ignorance and keep a straight face in times of turbulence to maintain modesty.
Our nails embedded into our palms, we bleed.
And a storm has formed.
Through the storm we seek the same refugee we watched our mothers seek. Always thinking that the outcome will be different.
This one is not the same.
We’re not our mothers.
Our love is different.
It’s respected.
It’s mutual…
as long as you’re the one doing the laundry and the cooking and the cleaning and you pay your half and you look after the child that you nearly bled out for.  
Nurturing, tending, cooking and cleaning and ‘whoops’ watch the knife…

bleeding.
Always bleeding.
It’s equal love though, isn’t it?
It’s what you wanted, right?
When you bore two children and you’re raising three, that’s what you wanted. That’s what you bled for.
That’s what you bled for?

Who has he bled for?


He walks into the kitchen, boots scuffing the linoleum on the way.
Dumping the scrapped leftovers of love you gave him in the early out of the morning into the trash and tossing the containers into the sink.
He pats the heads of the people he pretends make him whole and goes to the shower to rinse off the 10 hour shift of hard labor that didn't involve his family.

You don’t expect a kiss at this point because you learned that asking for what you deserve could come with a broken orbital socket.
So you let your heart bleed.
You bleed it into your kids.
You let them know that they are loved.
You pretend that everything is okay.
You go to work, you come home, you bleed and you bleed and you bleed.

Hopeful that your daughter doesn’t see.

She is a teacher, she is a guide,
A doctor, a pilot, with strength and pride.

She reaches the stars, she touches the sky,
No dream too big, no goal too high.

She leads, she builds, she loves, she fights,
A force of power, a source of light.

Happy International Women's Day!

Tremendous effort by those who develop ability
to keep their tongue in check
For a day from being politically incorrect

I do mind when you look at me
Saying do not mind and then proceed to tell
Another cutting sexist bad humour.

She walks a narrow path,
over a valley filled with wrath.
One wrong turn,
and in the fire she's left to burn.

She always dreamt to stretch her wings, but never did fearing the stings.
She always wanted to soar high,
but feared the endless predators in the sky.

A smile she wears as the day goes by,
lets no one see the tear in her eye.
The pain in her heart goes un noticed by most,
though it rings from coast to coast.

Her voice no one ever heard,
not a single sentence or word.
No laughs of joy nor cries of pain,
all for herself to contain.

Lonely at times she gazes at the night sky, trying to catch any falling star that may go by.
Wishing for her misery to end,
wishing to enjoy life and its moments with a close one, a friend.

Laughs and cries to herself at times, putting down what she feels into rhymes.
Pushed around forever,
rarely allowed to pursue her own endeavour.

Her goals and dreams,
never morph to reality it seems.
For others she lives,
without thinking her everything she gives.

How long will this go on,
how long will she suffer from dusk to dawn?
All the injustice and spite,
will this continue to be her plight?

Why can't she be allowed,
to rise up and touch every cloud?
To laugh more and less to cry,
all set bounds and limits to defy.

To fight and to resist,
to deal with every twist and tryst.
To have an equal foot on every front,
no more to take the brunt.

Her eyes never to sparkle with remorseful tears,
to do away with all her worries and fears.
Her freedom to life and right to every joy, lets protect and not destroy.

To end her pitiful plight, and let her enjoy her life’s glorious flight...