Half of the Sky by Emily Mao

And we wrote her into poetry,

Took away her pain, her story,

Made it worth nothing more than the words we dug up to describe it.

We bled her pretty,

Like a hummingbird,  

We bled her gentle,

Like the rose that bloomed across the center of her shirt,

The familiar figure of her shadow traced —

On bed sheets, buses, rivers, across streets in Nepal,

By men who picked her to play their Eden,

Spread her body into a paper angel,

We watched

And we told her to cry,

But cry beautifully,

Cry silently.

We never killed the bird,

But we silenced her song,

Seeked comfort more than we desired to carry her up —  to change a world,

So we left her heart — spilling poetically,

We left her body — crumbling down like a palace of cards,

We closed our eyes  — as half of the sky fell out.