For Mahsa, a poem for the women of Iran | by Victoria Gugenheim

It was the merest strands of hair,
On a girl adept at daylight
That were wayward signs to these infernal men.
Their sights set on those tresses,
Deemed impure,
Hair equals harlot they inferrred.
They never saw the human;
female, woman, whole, ambitious, kind,
It mattered not to them;
Those praetors of flesh,
Policing every woman's breath;
That they could get away with
Their deeds as lowly as their words,
Unconscionable.
Each insult, brick and kick they hurled at her
For this imagined slight against their honour
A projection of their virulent insides.
They were but dogs to her,
Barbaric, brutal, bludgeoning,
They could not bear her light,
And with their rape and fury at her spirit,
Snuffed it out,
The most malicious way to go,
The taking of a life for daring to be girl.
At her last breath,
the women of Iran, pain in their breast,
Of another fallen sister surged,
Her flatline electrified their cries, of AZADI
Mahsa no longer mortal,
Beyond flesh she is idea,
And as she laid in wake
Each woman fated
To accept a state as bleak
Took to the streets,
Hair unbound, fists raised and bodies free,
Her fallen light their fire,
As they set alight hijabs,
They will no longer be kowtowed,
She is a symbol of ENOUGH! to every woman of the world now,
And through her unjust execution
That shook the world,
Now dawns their revolution!
Sisters, your time is now!

WOMAN,

LIFE,

FREEDOM!

Victoria Gugenheim is a contributing editor at Medusa Rising. This poem originally appeared on her Substack.

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