Dirk: A bayonet or a knife. A generally cut-throaty thing.
She can either be an axe-wielding shrew
Or a damsel in distress
The rainbow between
The two states of being
Is ephemeral, the stuff of delusions
Mirages and wild fantasy
She can only be one of those things
That nebulous, pearlescent intervening realm
Rests in the shadows, forgotten
Un-remembered, un-loved
It sits in between
The shrinking violet and she who staggers
Hands full of daggers
In the precipitous crags
Of no-man’s land
The woman, that grande dame
Living in the iridiscent silver sweep
Of grace, softness and strength
Connecting to the very cosmos itself
Reposing in the upraised hand
Of Mother Nature, she has a plan
She’s not distressed and she’s not a man
She’s all woman, passionate, warm
She can move mountains
She can whip up storms
She’s also gentle and wise
She’s the one who ties
Fathers and daughters and sons
In shimmering forever bonds
She defines
The very ethos of humankind
But she is a fairy, she’s unreal
She lives in this other realm
So close yet out of reach, and in this
Our world she can either be
A timorous tea rose or a mannish gal
And so she has picked a side
The flinty hoyden resides
In her everyday garb
She charges into streets
She advances down corridors of corporate intrigue
She launches strategic assaults
Against her womanhood, her essence
Her femininity
To keep her wellbeing even-keeled
Sometimes … sometimes
When the primordial instinct kicks in
She yearns
For her softness, her bliss
For the profoundness
Of being a woman
But that fleeting notion
Scatters with the burgeoning of the day
Burdening her day
She severs the thread, casts it aside
She becomes, for the thousandth time
A spiny, dirking porcupine
And that is how she will stay.
Mahvash Mohtadullah 