The Barren Printing Press

When ink is pressed,

into the pages of a book

the book feels a sense of joy,

that it has a purpose to serve, and

it will soon be clutched

in the hands of a young girl

who’ll trace the letters and learn how to read.

When the book is delivered,

it lies in the carton

spine-to-spine with fellow books,

and wonders when it will be opened,

it may be summer, but school starts soon.

But, the book is unaware

that the streets are barren, and

there’s hardly the sight of a woman,

let alone groups of girls

with white headscarves and black uniforms

making their way through the groups

and walking into the schools.

The schools are chained and shut, and

other books with names, that reveal

the incriminating identity of a learner

are being burned by a matron-

tears streaming down her face as she prays

for an end to what she knows will

steal childhoods, livelihoods, and

rob the neighbourhoods of joy.

And the streets are barren

of the life that bloomed in the last twenty years,

painted by the laughter of daughters

born to mothers who fought

for their children to live with what had been

taken from them in their own youth.

And the streets are barren,

of the dreams that the youth

were promised twenty years ago and

the future their parents bled for.

And the streets are barren,

even the wind cannot sing

when there are forlorn cries

of mothers mourning their living daughters.

Soon, the printing will stop, and the presses will be as barren as the streets.