My Today, Your Tomorrow

Stay still

Don’t talk

Don’t share opinions

Don’t breathe too loudly

Do you want to embarrass yourself?

Shut your mouth

Discipline your kids

Cover up. Where is your burqa?

You need to get a hold of yourself.

You can’t go outside but supposed to cook

You can’t go to school but supposed to raise kids

You can’t go anywhere at all.

Women can’t go outside

I grew up

Boys went to school

We stayed, we stayed

Stuck in a prison we couldn’t get out

Every day I sit

And look through the bars

The bars that are killing me alive

But I’m not even allowed to sit

My neighbor’s name was Fariba

She was only a junior,

It didn’t take long for her to discover the Taliban rule

Couldn’t go to school anymore

Her heart break emerged into a poem

“Why Was I Born a Girl” she titled it

“I wish I was a boy because being a girl has no value,” she wrote

Probably writing her last poem

At first it was small things

Small things that started building a fence over the hypocrisy

And that fence grew more and more until we couldn’t see the other side

We women couldn’t jump from the fence no matter how hard we tried

That country died

Our rights are destroyed

Our voices silenced

Our dreams confined

Seize control before our today

Turns into your tomorrow

The Right Path

I want to go back

I want to go back where nothing mattered

I want to back not care about my grades, my looks, my everything

I want to go back where everything was simple

I am sick of social media controlling my emotions

Like I’m some robot programmed to obey

I keep scrolling down

But the right path I can’t find

I want to live every second of my life

Not throwing anything out

I want to read books, go on picnics, write poems

I want to be so bored that I make games out of my mind

Imagination can’t be replaced

It’s something so extraordinary

It’s one and only

When did it become like this

I don’t see children play in the park

Imagining the playground was

A house,

A ship,

A plane,

Every corner I look into is people glued to their phone

It is a life or death matter isn’t it

Do you even remember what you were watching

You are scrolling down 90 second videos

Before your brain can even process

When was the last time

You had a day without looking at your phone

When was the last time

You put everything aside and lived the moment

Listening to music, writing, reading

I miss where the mirror was only for funny expressions

Now I look at my body and point out my insecurities, how I will be never enough

I miss where I could go out outside with my PJ’s and not care

Now I pick clothes for hours wasting my time on looking perfect

I miss where I could go to school without brushing my hair

Now I sleep with rollers stinging to my head

I look back at myself

Where I swore

I swore that nothing could change me

But now I know it’s just a lie

A lie like everything in my life

Every day I feel like I am in a cage, performing on a stage

Every day I am restrained

I am pinocchio

leaping at the tug of unseen strings,

dragged across the world like a puppet in a storm,

longing to become real and free.

I want things to go back to where they were before

I want to fix my broken path