source: taarikajohnart
"How we have failed you, little Asifa
I want to be content
with saying
that the news articles full of
details and words
robbed me of mine,
that (the words) left my lungs
like the breath left yours.
But I cannot be content
with silence today,
so I'll use the ones I have left
to create alternate endings to your story,
ones where you grew to 10, 25 and 80,
dying of old age or disease,
and not the pilfering of your childhood and body.
i. in the first story, you go home
with your cattle, singing a song
in tune with the bells tinkling around
their necks. You tell your mother
about the birds that dotted the trees
and how there was a cloud the shape
of a heart in the sky. You make faces
at the bhindi you are forced to eat
with dal-chawal or roti, and she makes
them back at you, sending you into peals
of melodious laughter that echoes
in the still night.
ii. Every night you rest peacefully
in your own home and wake up
again the next morning.
iii. A policeman helps you
cross the road as you walk to school.
iv. The only shade of orange you know
is the sky painted in sunsets - or sunrises.
v. When people hear your name, they
picture an old woman with rivers
running through her skin and a crop
of wheat for hair.
vi. Page 8 is not the last,
it does not contain the words
The End.
But fiction
will not do justice.
These words cannot drip in nectar.
There are no flowers here,
except these
that
fall
from heart
to head
stone.