‘Child marriage are not two words that should even be together in the same sentence’
Her pelvic cracks a little (just a little), on the first night he breaks into her body
She looks up wide eyed, confused into his stained teeth which passed into adulthood
Even before she was conceived in her mother’s womb
He sucks on her meat, his teeth in her ribs, crushing a temple that would
Have stood where his hands now smother what looks like an areola ready
To bloom when spring arrives, the bride now walks in a plantation dreaming
Of school, friends, a library of unread books, lunch boxes to be shared
Fights with her brothers and her mother’s helpless gaze from the kitchen
Her small back broken now, her willowing arms trying to become oars
Rapidly splashing in the sea on a stormy night, tired, they give up by dusk
And wake up to a sticky field full of mines with a cane in the throat
She is a woman now, while the men wait for harvest from her
Ephemeral womb that is yet to stitch its layers into one piece of human tissue
She is a bride, with purple flower, a peeking face behind a veil, a statistic in a paper about illiteracy,
A missing daughter, a piece of news that may turn into a documentary,
A story in the news that the west will read if they open the right page,
an unidentified cold body in the sugarcane field, a missing number in the school register,
she is a note in the book of opposing parliamentarians, an illiterate teenage mother,
A little girl just like my niece who lies silent in a hospital bed bleeding,
a pupil missing from a classroom full of boys flying paper planes,
a slave, an economic burden, an epitome of poverty,
a dowry that was passed from one hand to another between two adult men,
she is a family’s honor being protected, a prisoner of war,
she is this and that, everything men can think of but a little child that she truly is
who dreams one day of becoming a doctor, a pilot, a scientist or a teacher, anything but a wife
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