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Is a child bride just another nine year old girl? Or is she a woman interrupted, and reduced to a statistic? This poem makes you think.
The fresh breeze dances
lightly on the tips of the dangling dewdrop as
I run in the lawn of colourful imagination. The juicy sun
shines on my small feet.
My big, innocent eyes taste the world
With the all wonder of a nine year old girl.
Exploring, singing, living, breathing-
Free.
Like all children deserve to be.
A sudden darkness.
I stumble on the narrow-minded sexist stones; the most
poisonous of them all. My lush lawn of imagination
gets overthrown by the hard ground of reality, as,
A demonic spiral of a wedding garland tightens its hold on my trembling neck
choking my freedom.
Murdering my childhood.
Licking away all innocence.
Now, as I look up to see my twenty year old groom
I am just
A lifeless, empty shell.
Another 9 year old bride
Among 67 million others like me.
Pic credit: snugglepup (Used under a CC license)
Hi! I'm an often overly-excited, frequently fun-loving, and sometimes deeply-sunk-in-
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