WEEK 1 - THE DAY SHE WAS BORN

Comforting darkness all around
Surrounding the hut standing alone
Away from the cluster, the village hub
The hut itself ... darker still

No light shines from deep within
The old woman sprawls on a mat inside
Awaiting the call from the ancestors
For once, the rage in her is still

The bellow of a child rips the air
Crashes into the old woman's head
She opens her eyes reluctantly
The lids made heavy by folds of skin

She listens to the howling of the child
A girl, she knows, for new-born sons cried not like that
Having nothing at all to protest about
The whole wide world being theirs alone

Perhaps also, the Immortal Lands?
May the gods forbid it, say it's not so!
Anger flares in the old woman
Like smoke to cloud her weakened heart

To have your name woven in songs
To rush into battle with up-held spears
Oh, what joy this life would have been
To have been a born a man like them

Instead, here she lies in woman's form
Used and decrepit from thankless tasks
No sooner gone than sooner forgotten
Even in the thought of him she'd weaned

The vision of all that she was denied
Of all that she surely could have been
Fell down from her in feverish sweat
To drench the mat prickling her back

The bellow of the girl-child rings again
And quells the rage in the old woman
It stirs curious wonder within her soul
For there is something about this girl born

That screams defiance into the night
That hushes the village to a deadly calm
Even the crickets give it room by
Suspending their incessant, melody chirps

The old woman's eyes shine with mirth
As she brandishes wide a toothless grin
Her deepest regret listening to the child
She would not live to spur her on

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