A touching tribute to all women

I’ve been looking at you for quite a while,

Watching how graceful happiness becomes of you,

I know how your annoying laugh sounds

With your head to the back,

How your jokes forced you to crack open,

A mountain that gold sits behind,

Your smile is the curve happiness loves to loop on

Endlessly, you shine tirelessly.

All your masks are not foreign to me,

The tears you shed on the bathroom floor that night,

Kept me awake while your silent sobs broke my heart,

Your “I’m okay”, meant “I’m broken”

And Hello was just “help me”

I saw you look left and right and wipe the free fall of tears,

Off your face, while you face,

The world with that shy smile.

Let me trace every mark,

And name every scar,

And say “you are beautiful” for

I have felt the dried tear drops in your diary,

I have seen you strip off everything,

Clad in nothing but sad poetry,

Afraid and ashamed to tell the world the truth

That your heart was only broken to a million pieces.

Maryam Atoyebi is an elliptic Yoruba woman. She loves travelling, arts and she eats her Chicken sharwama in flat plate. She blogs at queenontheroad.wordpress.com and follow her on Twitter/Instagram @malikah_maryam

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