Then There Are The Girls.

 For Birtukan

 You didn't know you were supposed to stay in the house.

kitchen.madbet. ye setoch sera.

 

laughing, your three decades

barely under your belt

you swipe aside centuries

of patriarchy. channeling Taitu.

 

telling meles to take off his shoes

on his way out. we don't want

even our soil, our dirt, our land

to touch him. much less follow him

from where he came.

pray that devil back to hell.

they didn't know they are

supposed to fear you. what is

Kaliti but barbed wire anyway.

 

don't our little girls live a barbed wire existence daily?

hustling water from rivers. carrying firewood on their backs.

selling that ounce of dignity (along with that teenage body) for

a better tomorrow. goddammit for some food for the night.

barbed wire caging red hot dreams.passions.

and yellow freedom.

 

what is prison but an Ethiopian woman's life?

 

we are exiled in our own land;

we didn't survive three thousand years

for this.

 

for the Red to be blood running in the street.

for the Green to be owned by starbucks,

for the Yellow, oh that gorgeous yellow,

To be auctioned off to china, whose political

prisoners built that kelebet highway, while

our workers, those orange revolutionaries,

unemployed youth rot. Let them chew chat.

not for this.

 

for little black girls to watch their fathers riddled

with bullets before their golden eyes. to hold their elders

in their hands and watch their future slip away

 

not for this.

three thousand years are for you, beautiful girl.

Woman. For dinkenesh, longing to break free

from that seattle museum because

she knows she wasn't  supposed to be

tied up. shackled. Displayed and sold.

 

she has to get back home. Ogaden. Bali, Omo. Harar,

And yes Tigray. They all burn.

but you soldier on. that's what girls do.

what women do.

Ethiopian women.

 

Jegnoch! Zeraf!

Making hope out of ashes.

Heroines out of bones.

Fire out of our words.

Swords out of tears.

 

And leaders out of little girls.

 

We birthed humanity.

We now birth freedom.

Birtukan.... because well behaved Ethiopian women rarely make history!

Then There Are The Girls.