LET LOVE LEAD
By Cohort 5 of the Advocacy for Reproductive Justice in Africa Short course
A searing pain as her world shrinks and collapses.
Fear and terror grip her by the throat just like you did.
you rip into shreds her clothes and virginity
leaving behind a festering wound of self-loathing and insecurity.
Actions so dark, they defy human reason
so inhumane, devil incarnates in our midst.
“She asked for it”, you sneer without shame.
Our mother earth has morphed into a deadly jungle
where monsters roam freely and prey on the innocent.
They feed on fear and delight in the screams,
revel in the feel of blood coating and oozing from her.
She is a child not a sexual target or bride .
She is not a hollow vessel to be filled with babies.
Now you have made a child a child’s mother.
See how they are both crying.
Her pain is undermined.
Tears cascade inside.
You do not consider how she feels,
caged together with chauvinistic ideals,
you ship her off to bottomless vacuums
where her cry for help is swallowed by emptiness
and her plea to stop is choked by deafening silence.
The message does not seem to get through.
How can you justify such disgusting and vile acts?
Should we gorge your eyes out and scrub them clean?
maybe then you will be able to see that
man or woman, we are all human.
But violence has never been the answer.
Let us just love one another.
The author is an alumna of cohort 5 of the short course on Advocacy for Reproductive Justice in Africa
