A GIRL IS A GUN

SHE IS ONLY A GIRL AT FIFTEEN.

With stardust and fire

in her fist and a hunger for

world peace.

Her belly is a bag of rocks

and she is drunk on prosper and heartache.

She is anything she wants to be

at aged fifteen.

But she is not a wife.

She is not a keeper of secrets;

that’s not what her womb is for.

She isn’t a garden;

her thoughts aren’t flowers

to be plucked like rotting teeth

from her mind

till all she knows

is that women are meant to be seen

not heard.

At sixteen she is just a girl,

not a spine for men to climb

and make a throne out of her

shoulders.

Her body is not a vessel.

She wishes to carry herself, not an empire.

She is just a girl

but at aged seventeen,

she is questioning

what it means to be a mother.

By Abida Uddin