Coercion Read Single →
“I can break coercion into three pieces, swallow it down three
times a day, but I cannot weave it into poetry for you. Yes, coercion
is a bitter meal, served morning, noon, and night to girls who closed
their eyes at dusk and never saw another dawn. Night clung to life,
to dreams, to the scent of bread that never rose. Coercion is not
poetry. I cannot fold it into a page, crumple it, cast it away. It
looms larger than me, larger than Band-e Amir Goharshad’s gardens
the vineyards drunk on forgotten sun. Coercion is a nightmare,
stitched to the unfinished dreams of our daughters. It does not
divide, it multiplies, seeps into all things. It is vaster than a
homeland and has devoured time itself. No one speaks its name. Even
the BBC would rather whisper of Johnny Depp’s broken—or unbroken—finger
than murmur the ruin of a girl’s forsaken dream. But this is not news.
It is coercion, spreading like plague, dragging us back to a century
where no one even lifts a brow for the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights.”
