There are thousands of broken vessels caked over with clay and they say
“Look, it walks the same.”
As if that is enough, they say
“Look, it speaks the same, but it should speak less.” And nod at their hubris.
They cake clay over the cracks they engraved in it and say
“This is who woman should be. This here and we made that.”
But they peel off a part of them, carve it out with dirty knives, in dark places and they pretend the screaming is right and when they die they say
” Those are the weak.”
The bleeding children on reed mats who are being excavated like plots of land some stranger decided to build outdated traditional values on, carving out edge ways for their flawed ideologies to flow they say
“Look, it bleeds the same. Carries children the same. My child would be the same.” Then pray for suns to carry their mind rot.
There is rotting clay, trying to fix porcelain bodies
“Now fetch water.” they say.
“Speak less.”
“Head down.”
“Shut up.”
Women are not their bodies, or the holes carved into them. They are not the parts carved out of them. But they are. Every-one of them is. And that, that is enough.
There are scared girls who think they have to suffer to be whole. They have to be less of the human they were born to be and they believe it.
Because the clay is shoved down their throats too.
They speak maggots and sand.
Their minds rot as they scream.
And the rest….
They beat drums and dance.
They call it right. They call it perfect.