Tell me we live in a world where broken hearts can be salvaged with twine
and a little bit of glue to hold all the splintered pieces together
and I’ll show you a photo of the 23-year-old New Delhi woman
who was gang-raped by six men on a bus and then thrown out the door
onto the road like garbage.
Tell me that the moon will always shine through the longest nights,
no matter how dark the sky, and I’ll read you her obituary from
the first to last line. Yes, she died of her injuries, and she died
on a Saturday in a hospital in Singapore when she should have been
laughing with her friends, or reading all the books she ever
wanted to read in a library all her own.
So let’s build her a library; let’s build her a ship filled with every single
star in the goddamn sky and make it shine just for her.
If she couldn’t live, at least we can light the way to wherever
she’s headed next.
So next time you board a bus and hand your ticket to the driver
before selecting your seat, I hope you think
of all the women who ever sat in those spots with their bags
held tight to their bodies
because they were afraid of being touched
by someone who didn’t give a damn about the tenderness
of their skin or the fragility of the place between their legs.
And I hope you remember that woman in New Delhi
who lived in the same world that you and I do,
but who left it in a way that none of us ever deserves to.