Child bride poem by Rebecca Dollinger

Child Bride/Forced Marriage Poem Read by Shayna set Shabbat dinner in Senegal I watched you walk down the aisle In the beautiful African bush of Uganda Empty eyes full of lost promise and lost childhoods Your tears so steamy they fogged up my glasses Heart so full of crushing burning that it sprints inside your chest Pulls your veins until he slips that ring on your finger The man who has just about as many teeth as years you had to grow The marriage I knew at first glance could in no way be consensual You deserved love You deserved a prince The Declaration of Human Rights states that a girl must be of full age to marry, and must be married with both parties full consent. Yet somehow that magically gets glanced over in these underdeveloped countries These are just little girls For girls that never had the privilege of the word no For girls who think that love is just a fantasy princesses obtain According to a recent statistic, approximately fourteen percent of girls in Yemen are married before the age of fifteen And fifty-two percent before age eighteen They are just little girls with dreams crushed by monster trucks of their fathers and future husbands For the eleven year old girl in Yemen who slits their wrists trying to commit suicide Three days after she gets married to a man twenty one years older than her When she tries to get a divorce order, the judge tells her they don’t divorce little girls She looks at him with a stare so hard it could melt ice and freeze water “Then why do you let them get married?” I asked my father later about that girl in Uganda He said it was not a child bride She was probably of full age But it was probably not her choice She probably did not get the gift of refusing a man Did not get the chance to say yes to a proposal The word no is written in her tears And the blood she sheds peeling potatoes for her baby one year later I want to change the world I want to mold in like silly putty burning through my fingers Want to erase all struggle and give girls the education they so much deserve Want to teach them about love Want to teach them understanding Want to finally teach them that there is a difference between making love and rape That there is a word called no That they have the power to stop the world if they want to That they are more than just a teenage womb That they are just a little girl And little girls deserve to play And run across the african dirt without worries They deserve to learn To teach To know And to imagine a world greater than their own When all they know is swirling pools of nerves flushing their heart rate like the steady beat of a drum slowly goes to silence I want to fix the world with metaphors Tell them every step towards their mother’s house is a step away from him and towards who they are meant to be That nights are just days when the sun has forgotten how to shine So when the line has blurred between rape and consent When you have forgotten there is anything in this world other than you and your children When you pray to the heavens that God will grant you a boy so that your daughter never has to feel the way you feel Just remember that the sun always remembers to get up in the morning and start a new day That it never gives up, no matter how many times the moon takes over I want to tell you this in the same way that I want to tell you to run away to your mother’s house That running away is just as strong as persevering Little underdeveloped girls from underdeveloped countries forget Forget their education Forget their dreams Forget that eyes are meant as vessels to your soul So they should be clear as the summer sky Not paths to the soul they only wish existed Eyes so clouded they have lost their will to speak Mouth that knows nothing but the hot breath of a man far too old for you Arms that only know abuse from everyone but yourself Ears that can only hear now, never say no The word no is a privilege too few girls are forced to drop on their long road away from their dreams I