The Girl Whose Ballet Shoes Were Taken
He watched her in her deepest sleep.
She was no longer
His favourite ballerina
She was now, instead,
A side effect
Of this war.
He watched her in his mind
Her rosy lips untainted
By the taste of death.
He painted,
Inside his head,
A life without her.
It was,
A future that lacked colour
A past that would hurt
To live with.
At three, she had wanted to be a firefighter.
At five, a pilot
Riding above the sun by day
Ambitious girl, wasn’t she?
At seven she became a corpse,
That died in vain.
The tanks in the streets came rolling
She turned into the ricochet
Of a gunshot
Into the ricochet of a thousand gunshots
All of them searing holes
Into his life.
He watched her choke-
He watched her choke
To death.
Eventually,
She let go
And buckled
Under the weight of a hundred cannon balls
Under an army of soldier’s boots
Their shoes going crunch crunch
Over a city of broken bones.
He watched her being tossed,
Atop a tangled mesh
Of white and red remains
The stench of human flesh,
Unrestrained, rose and
Slowly kissed her
Her blood-stained ballet shoes
Were snatched
From her feet
By soldiers
And given to someone else’s sister.
Do not be fooled by the man in the mask
Do not doubt
They plan to deceive you
That is the only way to survive here
The rules are being bent
And broken
Lost and forgotten
Relent
Against those who would punish you
Who would do you harm
They are not your brothers or your sisters
Nor your friends or lovers
They have unraveled the very fabric of existence
Weaving it back together with their own thread
Their own ideals
Forgetting the roots of their cause
Forging their way in ways unimaginable
Cruel are they to the plight of the fallen
Writing their message in red in the snow
Telling you to follow
Because
You have nowhere else to go
Then leaving you alone
To
Die
In the cold
Worth.
I've heard the jokes.
An Asian woman in a white-washed country,
they ask me how disappointed my parents were,
if I "brought shame upon my famiry"
if they tried to lose me in an alley,
or down a flight of stairs.
"That's the Chinese," I answer meekly,
though I'd like to both ignore them
and lose them down the stairs,
"who only want sons.
Women are worth a lot
in my culture."
I enjoy the surprise,
the occasional murmurs of approval.
What I don't say,
is that women are worth more
the way gold is worth more than silver.
When I was young,
a woman was beaten for being caught
smiling to a man
who was not her cheating husband.
He left her, shamed and broken,
and my mother told me
not to laugh too loudly,
or stand too proudly,
and to never be friends with boys.
As women,
we are not women.
We are daughters, wives,
mothers,
like livestock, already fated,
born to be sold, born to be bred,
born to live and die,
for family.
Home of Miss World 2014 and Miss Earth 2014 (not that it’s relevant hahaha)
I came from a small country in Asia,
But my race is scattered all over the world,
We are part of the Pacific Ring of Fire,
that's why earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are common.
When you go to the city
It's too crowded,REALLY
But wait til' you go to the mountains and beaches
I'm sure you'd like to stay longer
My country's full of beautiful places to see
But my countrymen don't know how to care of them
That's why most of it are damaged
And forests became a wasteland
I'm from the Philippines ;)
