You are just a girl. You are told.
You can’t play as much as he can
You can’t eat as much as he can
You can’t travel as much as he can
Girl, do you know your strength
Changing the cant’s to can?
You are just a girl. You are told
Protect your family & family name
Protect your body
Protect your virtue
Protect your honour
Girl, do you know your strength
Persevering despite the weight of protecting?
You are just a girl. You are told
Carry the weight of your new home on your slender shoulder
A cook, wife, mother, and a caregiver
A nurturer, a protector, a doer, an educator
Woman, do you know your strength
Handling all the roles and becoming a grown woman on the wedding night?
You are just a woman. You don’t know your strength
Struggling to make sense of the ways of men around you
You live by their rules, their expectations, their diktats
You are called emotional, weak, and sensitive
Yet, the quiet strength of yours is difficult to emulate
Woman, do you know that the world that you create
Would just be a shell if you weren’t around?
Alas, little do they know!
image credit: Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay
This was published in Spillwords.
