She fights a thousand battles
Every single day.
With all the courage and strength
In her veins.
And you ask again and again
If she has the won the war yet.
We try to justify the world
That we live in.
We think hard and find examples
Of women who made it.
But ask yourself again
Why do you need to think so hard?
I wrote a poem once,
When I was six, about my mother.
I called it ‘A Lovely Lady’.
No one told me then how she
Was more than just that.
She made the conscious decision
To give life to another human being,
To let it live inside herself.
And to give endless time, and love, and care
To someone, to get possibly nothing in return.
She fought a battle then,
And she fights a battle now.
I distinctly remember my aunt
Bringing me chocolates every day.
She didn’t have a child of her own.
She was happy, like my mother.
And she had made the conscious decision
To be happy.
She worked hard, worked her magic
On hundreds of children,
In a tiny little school.
She worked hard,
With all the courage
And all the strength she could muster
Answering hundreds of people
Justifying her decisions to all of them.
She fought a battle then.
And she fights a battle now.
My niece was sixteen
When one evening
She didn’t know what was happening anymore.
She said she wanted to go to work.
She wanted to fend for herself.
She fought a battle then,
And she fights a battle now.
When every day,
And every decision is a battle in itself,
Every woman wins.
She won then, when
We tried to kill her as a child.
She won then, when
We tried to burn her alive.
She fights everyday.
In our homes, in our streets, our schools, our worlds.
She fights everyday
And she wins.
Not as your mother, your sister,
Your aunt or your wife.
She wins as a person.
And as everything she stands for.
She won then, and she wins now.
And as we speak, she is winning the war.
Of the crimson skies 