by Aryan Ashory
Hey Talib a stain of shame in our history
You didn’t show mercy to our newborn babies
You didn’t show mercy to our students
You didn’t show mercy to our pregnant women
You didn’t show mercy to our old white-bearded fathers
You didn’t show mercy to our wise sisters and brothers
I wish for this slaughterhouse generation to be destroyed
I wish for our notebooks to be no more tainted with blood
I wish that we lose no more our kin and our beloveds
I wish for no more crying, collapsing, tears and pain
I wish that our education be no more cloaked in blood
I wish that we no more be the page of sorrow in the history of the world
I wish that our goals no longer be cut short before their fulfillment
I wish our hills be no more filled with the corpses of students
I wish those living to be coloured no more with red
Aryan Ashory is a 16-year old poet and filmmaker from Afghanistan. She spent two years in Greece, before moving with her family to a refugee camp in Germany. Her poems are in Dari, English, Greek, and German. One of her short films, about her experience of Coronavirus and quarantine in a refugee facility, was among 15 finalists for the Girl Rising Competition and is available here.