Poem: All My Sisters

Poem: All My Sisters

(Dr. Hojjat Baqaee)

All my sisters are

that minister's wife

who, with wide-awake eyes

pulls out hope from files

and puts it in the pocket of the law

that street child

who swallows her entire childhood

with the smell of smoke and hawking

and still has a smile

that she can't seem to shake.

All my sisters are

the woman

who moves the whole world in the hypermarket

with the voice of "Next, please"

and still

thinks

about her boyfriend

whose math score has dropped.

And the woman

who sells flowers next to the red light

with a tired veil

and cheerful flowers

to gather her evening bread

from the heart of horns and trunks

.

They all have a place in my heart with the name of sister.

Even the taxi driver who sings her favorite song in the crazy morning traffic without caring if someone is frowning behind her. Or the pilot who ties the sky like a scarf to her long hair of experience and lands the plane with a final smile with maternal security. My sisters are women who walk under the relentless rain of judgment with boots of patience and umbrellas of dreams. I wish an earthquake... not from the ground, but from the hearts and shakes all the walls of incomprehension! I wish people could walk the streets without bad energies, without scars on their tongues, without racial and sexual slurs, and change history with a "good morning." Let us learn love
not with the rush of touch
nor with trembling lust
but with respect.
Let us learn to love
like a mother who kisses her child
not for herself
but for her childhood.
And may a day come
when a girl alone in the alley at dusk
feels like a sister
not a prey in the dark.
If I write a poem
about a woman
about a girl
about a mother
about a lady
about a sister
it is not because I am a poet
it is because I have not yet forgotten to be a human being.

----
Monday, August 3, 14th is International Sisters Day...
+Diary of a Research and Development Consultant