Found this poem in an old diary of mine…17/9/98   (18 years ago)… I dont’ feel the same anymore but I know in many parts of the world, a woman still feels she is in shackles. Invisible but binding making it difficult to survive.

 

I felt so hollow within me,

No-one however insightful could see,

A deep chasm that’s hard to fill,

Like the Ocean that on the surface is still…

 

I felt the need of a crutch,

A friend was what I needed so much,

No longer could I cry,

My eyes had run dry…

 

I felt like a leaf blown away,

There was nothing more that I could say,

There wasn’t anybody who would listen,

I was at the mercy of another’s decision…

 

My desires, dreams, were not respected,

Nor my need to be understood accepted,

I was expected to follow,

That I could lead, they could not swallow…

 

I was born but a woman,

To be tossed around by man,

Father, Brother, Husband, whatever the form,

To dominate a woman was the age old norm…

 

Equality was still a distant dream,

Freedom, Justice, Empowerment just a theme,

Pleasant words like Sunday morning church bells,

As headlines in a newspaper that sells…

 

 

Far, far, beyond the horizon,

One day we shall be free and this woe forever gone,

For now, still a long, long way,

Before a Woman sees the break of day…

 

Many of us have seen the break of day. We mustn’t forget those who have not…for freedom is everybody’s right…