Let Me Go To School

By Noorjahan H.

Girls at school a decade ago in Afghanistan

Let me go to school

If you burn my book

I will write on the ground

I will write my exam answers on leaves

If my pen is broken, don’t be happy

I will write on damp ground with rocks

Don’t give me your garden fruit

If I am starving

Instead, allow me to go to school

To write apple on the flimsy ground

I have hundreds of questions

And now I don’t have answers

Why shouldn’t I write on soil,

And in the cosmos?