SHE FORGETS SHE’S A WOMAN
by Abu Bakr Sadiq
She forgets she’s a woman – First Runner-up of the 2018 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest (Poetry Category)
She forgets she’s from a land of ashes
Where women are unfinished novellas
Written without titles
By sages who only spoke in silence
Some days, she unfolds into a song
Empties the
Bottled deep in her throat
On the circled edges of my heart
Until her voice is the only tune in my ribcage
She forgets the names tied to her neck
Answers to every noun too strong for vessels like her
Weak; she forgets her shadows in the kitchen
Allows her body to freely entwine
With the frozen smokes treading the skies
Some days, I want to envy her
But envy is not a song for men like me
The boys who taught me how to be a man
Said men are rap songs
With sounds of gunshots of their hooks
And lyrics jiggered by the rhythm of their messages
Who forget everything their bodies
Were never meant to be, and go chasing after
Women who’ve forgotten they are women
Some days, she cries her body to sleep
And calls it an act of bravery at dawn
Says that’s how women become men
Without asking who took the who
Out of the
Was ought to be defined by
A lot times, that’s how she forgets she’s a woman
