Black Scarves

A Poem by Eddie Gao

I do not mean to offend anyone through this poem, and I do realise it is opinionated, but what is the meaning of language if people do not have the freedom to express their feelings and opinions?

She is four, playing on the street

Her mother calls her in to read,

Sewing a seed inside her

To make her truly believe.

She is eight, her brothers off to school

While she obeys, treated like a fool

Locked at home, her life dictated.

Yet she recalls, this isn’t what the book stated.

She is twelve, maturing fast

Meanwhile her youth and innocence pasts

And the modest lady father aspired her to be

yearns so desperately to be free.

Then she’s sixteen, the net is thrown

Devouring her and the little liberty she’s known.

As blackness descends around her,

She wonders why when father slurs the beatings come,

and she knows too well her true life is done.

When she’s twenty, wed to that malicious cousin with plenty

She remains trapped, strapped to their will.

I watched as the girl carefully examines her pen,

unable to imagine what miracles are held within.

Her life, one of obeying and not questioning

Stained with their corruption,

She is unable to even write her own version

of events.

And now,

Peering at me from behind the black,

her circumstances are tinted with hope.

I pity her.

She stares back at me, and sees.

And I wonder, why was it her and not me?

© 2012 Eddie Gao

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Featured Review

soady

I really like this song and the rhyme. My favorite verse:
"I watched as the girl carefully examines her pen,
unable to imagine what miracles are held within."
I understood this as a clear and potent mind being held down. The end leaves me wonder myself...