The Unbelievable (I.P.)

I am that voice in your head –
the one aspired, more than anything,
from a little girl, to be a teacher...
not a phantom behind a veil...

The one set up a secret school
to learn how to read and to write;
what it felt like to smile again.
Have hands, mind – an identity
for the first time in their life...

till they ransacked their home;
burned the books, hers, and a friend’s...
locked the bedroom door – raped one.
The other got away...caught,

then arrested because her shoes
were ‘too noisy’ on the streets; a ‘law’,
made that afternoon...tortured
till she ‘spilled the beans’.

The one was stoned, two weeks
before their sixteenth birthday;
the one they called ‘promiscuous’.
A child they tore from her womb –
proof, they said...

The one does not ask
for your prayers, or your pity.
Instead, just that you believe
the unbelievable, and hear
that still, small voice,
in your head.