- Abida Uddin
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