Mariam Tahir
“A well read woman is a dangerous creature,” it says
and how about she who writes?
to say absolutely nothing of her
who should but cannot!
Even though she must, she must, she must
if she is to leave behind an antidote
to generational trauma, low self esteem,
living in weariness, indifference and neutrality.
Waking and sleeping and working
on schedules unwritten and
burning out and feeling a whole lot
more than she should,
she mimics her ovaries that
work themselves into delirium-
as all those who try too hard
invariably do!
As if pregnancy and childbirth
and being the interpreter in a marriage
between two families wasn’t enough-
or sorting and folding and airing out
non seasonal clothes for storage
not a handful already.
All the unheeded flashes of insight,
drizzles of immortality,
descent of words from beyond,
stories that no one else will tell
fall through her fingers
and swirl into smoke.
the weariness of being that woman-
of being the dangerous creature that is that woman!
