Sterile

Soft, dark hair
falls across her face
as she sleeps.
I watch her chest rise
and fall,
committing every moment of
my daughter’s babyhood to
memory …
this second-born is the last child I shall
bear—
my Sitara;
beautiful, innocent,
but in whose birth
I lost that which makes me a
woman.
Stolen,
without choice,
they took my femininity,
and with it, the love of my
husband …
plans of a large family
abandoned,
half-a-woman
no longer attractive,
dreams shattered in
the work of a doctor
whose job should be to protect—
not mutilate—
at the bidding of a
government
who care not for the rights of
women.

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