This is not news,
women gone
before they are counted:
their newborn flash
snuffed quickly
and quietly.
It is a crisis of numbers,
and numbers don’t lie.
The bodies are buried,
evidence wiped clean,
and all we have to count
is absence, an echo,
a daughter-shaped hole
in our hearts
if we allow the clinical edge
of scalpel truth to cut us there,
bright steel laying it all open.
Susan Daniels Poetry 
So sad. If only we valued women and girls more!
Quite sad. I wish we did.
Powerfully poignant, Susan.
Celestine, thanks. Another I wish I did not need to write.
We must value ourselves as women more. We cannot wait for men to do this. My first husband (past tense) was fond of saying “I don’t like women.” He said it like it the word “women” was a bad taste in his mouth. It was years before I even thought to ask “What do you think I am?” I must know to value myself.
Yes, we must value ourselves. So sad, though, in other cultures–when a foot is on your neck it is impossible to stand, even now.
When a foot is on your neck or on your mind it’s not easy to stand.
That, too. You have a poem there, Alice.
I think the issues are clearer when there is a literal foot on the head and I applaud the courage I see. All the same, the privilege of living in a country with supposed freedom’s and rights, I think, has blinded us somewhat to the propaganda head trampling we are getting. Still we have more leisure to create ourselves than most women on this planet. I’ve begun to seriously question just what I’m doing with it.
Thanks for this post, Susan…..
Glad it said something to you, JH. Yes, our issues are different in the west, blessedly so. I would like to use some of my freedom (literal or metaphorical) to add my voice to those of us who are voiceless, if I can.
It’s sickening. We have to carve out enclaves of equality amongst whole societies that try and declare us unequal. By whose measure? Not our standards. We know the truth – and so do they. Change or get out of the way.
Oh, it has to happen, and soon. The cost of it not happening is staggering.