Written piece
Forty Girls
Smitha Sehgal
India
About this piece
This submission is in response to war that is slowly eating into our lives. It is about needing to remember that this Earth belongs to our children and our collective responsibility to realise the same. It is also about the power of language to appeal for peace and harmony.
Forty Girls
Forty days and forty nights
it rained, and the water swelled.
Our ark is made up of dreams
of the young and failures of the old.
In a desert woven with forty years
of sun, I walk with blisters.
Crafting lies as though I am here
to meet my God
who died in his fortieth year.
Here, eat my sleep, body and words-
It is spring on Earth.
Soon, the valleys will be covered
with roses planted by Mothers.
We always told our daughters
‘Hold your chin up.’
Forty girls were holding up
the chin of sky
when the shells rained down.
One of them had painted a sun
rising above the mountains,
Another had brought a dish
of ripe strawberries
plucked from a neighbour’s garden,
The oldest of them had pinned
a starflower on her sleeve,
The youngest of them had just learned
how to play a harmonica,
And there was one
who wrote a poem about war
that flickered on her eyelid that dawn.
Forty girls in a dream
holding up a chalice to peace
through flames.