I am fifteen years old.
Today, when I woke up,
I had to go to school,
A place that wastes my time
And bores me to tears.
When I got dressed,
Nothing
In my closet seemed to look right
And my hair frizzed into curls.
I poured my cereal in a bowl,
But we were out of milk,
So I went hungry,
And for six hours
I suffered
Through reading dreary books,
Solving complicated equations,
And using dirty,
Grime-covered bathrooms.
By the time I came home,
I just wanted to sleep,
But I had dance lessons
And a mountain of homework
And an annoying brother
to bug me to bits.
Today was a bad day.

Fatima is also fifteen years old.
She lives in a country where
It is not uncommon to be poor.
She did not go to school today,
And cannot read a book,
But rose early just the same to
Swaddle the baby
And feed a husband twice her age.
Fatima dressed in the one outfit her closet holds:
A dirty, torn
Rag of a dress
She outgrew years before.
At breakfast,
Her ill-tempered husband complained
That there was no milk,
And so out to the pasture
Fatima went.
The cow yielded one cup of her store,
And her husband was generous,
Leaving half the cup to her.
With a slap for a kiss and an insult for a sweet goodbye,
The bitter old man
Went to work at the hospital,
A profession forbidden to girls,
Leaving Fatima to the baby
And a house to clean until it shined.
With her glass of milk,
Fatima feasted,
But still went hungry,
And for six hours,
She suffered
Through the screams of a distempered child,
The choke of dust from the floors,
And a painful cramp in her gut,
For she had no bathroom to use,
Not even a dirty, grime-covered one.
At the end of the day,
She just wanted to sleep,
But in stormed her husband,
Drunk as a skunk
And demanding her body with rough hands,
And so Fatima quickly
Submitted,
Let him undress her
And take his pleasure
And her pain,
Then put the lustful man to bed.
After he had gotten what he wanted,
She held back tears.
The baby did not,
Which bugged her to bits,
And prevented her sleep,
But with her feast-of-milk morning
And her single-rape night,
Fatima could not argue:
Today was a good day.


In my dreams,
Fatima and I
Are both fifteen.
We both must go to school
To suffer through math and books,
And there the boys we meet
Will be boys,
But that does not mean
We are compromised.
We are not.
We still live with our parents;
They pay for the milk,
Whether with a morning’s quick chore
Or a day’s hard-earned salary,
And three times a day,
It flows into our cups
And steam wafts from our plates,
Full of nutritious delights.
And when the time comes
For that food to make
Its exit,
We walk down the hall to the toilet
And sigh.
No girls live like Fatima,
and they may wed who and when they please.
Men contribute,
And women do, too,
And they accept each other’s
With immeasurable gratitude,
And love consists
Of a hug
To show a feeling that
Aches in their guts,
But not from contact with fists;
Rather, an undeniable connection,
Support,
And a feeling that
Though they are independent,
Together, they are one,
Because men and women are just the same,
And in their hearts
Is love.