Go forth and bring peace to the world they told us
Yours are the voices
Your hearts will set things straight
(as if in its crookedness we are falling off the planet, us unsung heroines)

Every story you share will resonate
The equality you demand will be met (resistance be damned!)
The respect garnered there to stay

But
They did not consider the onerousness of this call
Heralding a new dawn
Shouting saffron signals across a hopeful sky yet slowly
Twisting to flag red
Robbing us of our own decisions our own choices our own truths

In the service of our children
For love
For quelling the hate that percolates up from the depths of unenlightenedness
Whoosh – like antacid on heartburn
Sacrifice yourselves
For the future

And for ourselves –
Or do we keep being to serve?
In service of parents and husbands and in-laws and babies and loud crashing noises that tell us self first is selfish selfish selfish

No no

No woman no cry
Be not selfish – your service will make you inherit the earth
Make generations after you believe of each other as not marginal
They will grow up with honour for the Other

And in our selfless uprising disguised

We are lemmings lurching off the cliff plunging head first into our own oblivion

We will change the karma of lifetimes

We with our capabilities, our intelligence, our willfulness

Not for naught

(but not for us)
So

We will serve ourselves up

For peace

For equality

The ones who come later socialized to think their partner as truly same same (but different)

Like egalitarianism does – in all its altruistic blindness

R.E.S.P.E.C.T (and all that)

We will ask ourselves how could we be fooled into this?
This giving in, giving up
Of our persons
For this Greater Good
When the greater god never made us the same
When the one was made from the bone of the other
When she with her coy glances enticed him to eat forbidden fruit
(it was is never his fault)

Oh no, we will tell ourselves…

Was it all then for nothing?

Like night to day

Light a candle and pray

But perhaps our sacrifices will make the differences beautiful
Because we will be standing as tall
As strong
As powerful
As proud
As from whom we are different
Two back to back, heads at same height, shoulders measuring up down
Bodies unalike

Dubai, Jan 2018