Girls and Moons

by Mahum Siddiqui

Theia is too big,
too unstable,
A spinning top on the cusp of collapse.

He thrashes through Earth,
chaos fed by
the pull of Venus,
the science of gravity,
the will of God.

I am my mother‘s daughter.
Patriarchy violently disturbs her
undisturbed flesh,
swells and grows in power,
too unstable
to harm in just a single way.

It is gruesome -
the impact.
Earth’s debris spills into the galaxy,
rains back down mockingly,
clusters and incubates.

I am moon,
born of violence,
deliberately accidental chaos fed by patriarchy is fed by
the pull of evil,
the science of manipulation,
the will of God,
they say.

A part of Earth becomes moon,
A part is too gentle,
her clipped wings,
her plucked feathers,
her broken dreams,
fertilized in chaos become me.
In the aftermath of Theia,
Earth watches birth,
her own flesh,
reincarnated.

Call it what you will,
gravity,
science,
God.

Mahum Siddiqui is a 23 year old first-generation Pakistani American from New York. Her writing seeks to contextualize and de-stigmatize the modern Muslim narrative, exchanging the stereotypes of the monolith for stories of individuals facing universal systems of oppression.