cut into womanhood

BY DESTINY GLADYS CHAIGA

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Slit apart  

Like a sacrificial offering  

The next-door girl screams her lungs out  

As fresh blood oozes between my 7-year-old  legs 

My gullet betrays my heart for a scream,  

I am numbed by excruciating agony  

We are girls cut into womanhood.  

Robbed of innocence  

Their hands shred our clitorises to the surgical floor  Where our sexual pleasures are stolen before puberty 

Now we lie as dead logs drained of feelings  

In a matrimonial bed promised as a place of ecstatic orgasm We are wives mutilated into womanhood.  

Extra vaginal tears  

For reward of childbearing  

They sew our vaginal openings  

With sworn words of eased childbearing  

Yet these labor pains are laborious indeed  

We are mothers cut into womanhood.  

“Ask no question”  

About the generational procedure ordained by  gods  

So, woman after woman’s genitals mutilated  For being born a woman

Meant being born a complete human deserving an  accursed circle vowed to be upheld We are women  cut into womanhood.  

Cut into womanhood  

We forever suffer the effects of genital  mutilation  

Financed by a majority of fathers  

Executed by a majority of mothers  

As the communities celebrate  

In the faintness of our ‘why me’ cries  

In the mirage of our fading selves  

For we are girls cut into womanhood.  

Let our girls be girls  

Let our wives enjoy marriage  

Let our mothers give birth  

Let our sisters be protected  

We can stop another generation  

Of girls cut into womanhood. 

Poem photo by Maxime Niyomwungeri — Gisenyi