I live on the first floor of a three-story house;
a place where I live with my father’s wives.

The moon,
on the night of the full moon,
is looking at me with a smile.

I am‌ tracing the mark of the electrical cable on my body
that my father beat me with.

My tears are gone;
but not my mother’s.

He beat me, but it was as if my mother felt the pain.

My father,
a man who never loved my mother.

How could anyone not love a woman with such beautiful eyes?
A woman with three daughters,
all three looking like her.

A father who, when I was born, refused to take me into his arms.
He did not recite the call to prayer into my ear.

He wanted a son,
and my mother could not give him a son.

So he married again, and again,
until his third wife gave him a son!

He loves him,
his son.

He has forgotten
that 
I am Elaheh,
his daughter,
once his only child.

He has forgotten
that I used to buy cigarettes for him
from the shop at the end of the street, barefoot.

He has forgotten me.

Today he was so angry that he wanted to destroy the house.
He smelled of hashish.

He wanted to sell me by force
to a man like himself.

My mother said I should not marry.
My mother, my protector.

And I, brave but trembling,
said,
“I will not marry.”

But he
swore that he would kill me.

He had become like a wild animal.
He beat me and beat me,
and I am still alive.

My father does not know that I am studying. Four years ago,
when the neighbor’s daughter said she was studying at an online school, my eyes lit up and I could hardly breathe.

I was shocked. Was it possible for me to study?
And go to university?
Online, from home?

But I did not have a mobile phone,
my mother bought me a phone with the money she earns from the embroidery she does day and night.

On the fabric, she embroiders flowers;
she buys happiness for her daughters.
She buys a secret freedom for us.

I studied;
at night,
in secret,
I embroidered and studied.

This year I will graduate from school.
Teacher Zahra says she will enroll me in an online university.

Teacher Zahra,
a woman who feels like a mother.

She taught me to heal my wounds
and to write poetry.

She connected me to the world; from this dark corner of my room,
at night, secretly, I read books. So many times the internet goes out,
and my tears unintentionally fall onto the screen of my phone.

My mother embroiders, and my sisters learn from her.
This is the only way to make money; our fingers burn with pain,
but it is worth it.

My mother, a woman from the mountains of Badakhshan, with a deep courage like a hidden mineral inside mountains where a white wolf lives.

I look at this house.
A house where my father is afraid of my books,
afraid of a quiet woman with thread and needle.

My father never went to school himself.
From childhood, he worked on his father’s land to survive.

Here,
power means
a man who has more sons.

And I, his rejected daughter,
will break the chain of this dark injustice.

I will go to university and save my mother and my sisters from the claws of this house, from this prison surrounded by barren trees.
We will survive.
And 
I will write poetry.

He cannot sell me
to a man like himself.

Because if I inherited my eyes from my mother,
I learned resilience from the stones of the lapis lazuli mines.

It is the sound of rain
mixed with the crying of my father’s son
and the laughter of his mother.

I am Elaheh,
a pain
and a poem.

We have a history lesson,
with Teacher Zahra;
a woman who says:

Every day, I should write,
write the pain.

My phone has no charge
and I pray that the electricity will come back.

I do not even know which God I am praying to,
a God who does not see us and perhaps does not love us;
because our prayers have never been answered.

On the cold kitchen tiles
I was sitting and playing with my beaded bracelet.

My mother calls me:

“My daughter, come and eat.”

“I’m not eating.”

“Come and do your embroidery.”

“I don’t want to.”

This woman knows me, deeply;
she knows my silence too.

It was 7:15 p.m.
The evening call to prayer.

The rain is gone now, and the scent of wet earth is in the air.

The electricity came back.

My sister screamed.
I laughed.

I plugged my phone in to charge,
and our hearts began beating again;
we came alive.

I connected to the lesson.

I heard Teacher Zahra say:

“Elaheh has joined us too!”

I cried.

As if
the wounds on my body were hurting;
a part of my heart
or my soul,
I don’t know.

What did I want?

My school?
My desk?
Or
my father?

And Teacher Zahra said she had sent us PDFs of new books:

“Study, and study.”

“Elaheh, I want to publish one of your poems in a magazine. Please send it to me.”

“Thank you so much, Teacher.
I will definitely send it.
I love you very much.”

“I love you too.
Take care of yourselves, girls.”

Everything is quiet.
It is the absolute silence of Kabul.

My hair clip is bothering me.
My sisters are asleep.

My mother is praying;
she is complaining to God about my father.

She cries quietly;
a woman with a strange strength and weakness.

I cannot sleep
because of the sound of the crickets.

I took my notebook
to write a poem;
with freedom as my intention.

Word by word,
with hope the color of a yellow wildflower.