A woman is a diamond, but here, in this country,
she’s in a draw-string bag engulfed in cotton and velvet
with only muted light peeking between the threads.

She can only stay within the bag,
or dare to loosen its strings.

A woman is a diamond so she must face being sold,
Wielded into a necklace by the wrong hands,
Put on a pedestal for all to see and none to hear,
But will stay covered for gross modesty.

She is precious, and must be protected from temptation.
God will strike she who fails to shield herself.
Her shine must be dulled and concealed by God’s word,
along with the voice he gave her.

As a diamond, she is condemned and punished for any word,
whether it be a grueling cry or a whisper of a soul.
She bears the scars and bruises for her own speech,
let alone the sound of wind leaving her lungs.

The draw string must be tight over her lips,
cloth draped from head to toe,
all in the name of modesty,
must the diamond be trapped with a soul.

As the precious, she must be subject to punishment,
to unholy policies meant to “protect,”
to the raggedness of the Taliban’s sediments,
as the precious, she must be an object.

As a sparkler, she is customary to comply,
to reshape, reform, repent, slave, and crawl,
for shaking and insisting might provoke men,
and awaken the vices of their own desire.

To keep her feminine shine,
like an apple in the garden with a snake nearby,
She must resist her own song, and
plaster her mouth shut with the coverings she wears.

For Eve is God’s apple of modesty and purity
and He doesn’t listen to mouths who cannot swear
That lo and behold, the voice of the diamond
threatens all these Adan silencers.

But shouldn’t desire fall on the shoulders of the man,
not the woman subject to his eagerness?

Still, freedom only comes in private,
and the key remains bound to he who
possesses the diamond — jewels hunched
on the floor begging to stop violence.

Yes, the home of the Taliban no longer rises to music,
or the bustling markets that once welcomed the diamond,
and now only wakes to silent whimpers,
and shaky breaths from under the cotton and velvet.

Yet, diamonds remain forged under pressure
and under pressure, they shall fight back
The world still watches
as gold and silver witnesses
the brilliance that has their backs against a wall.

One day, she will dare to pull at the string for all to see.