No Widow Should Walk Alone

Poem on widows' resilience against injustice; a call to stand with them.

                  No Widow Should Walk Alone

They said her worth was bound to his breath
A shadow, fleeting, when death’s wind blew.
Now she stands in the hollow of loss,
Her hands empty, the earth split in two
A chasm where his voice once bloomed like dawn,
Now echoes with the weight of unsung vows.

What is a widow’s name?
A ledger of absence, pensionless, stripped of land,
Deeds rewritten in a patriarch’s hand.
Her children’s hunger etched in her palms,
Each crease a river of sweat, each callous a psalm.
The world brands her ill-fated, whispers cleansing as they carve her skin with ash and ochre,
Veiling her worth in rites of shame.
She walks in a labyrinth of no
No home, no voice, no coins to count,
No right to grieve without a debt,
No vote to cast, no claim to her due,
Just the clock’s toll measuring what the grave stole.

Yet dawn still finds her kneading stubborn hope into bread,
Her fists pounding dough like the pulse of the damned,
Stitching resilience into seams frayed by time,
While merchants haggle over her widow’s mite.
Her sorrow is not a cage, but a storm
That bends but cannot break the spine
Of one who carries galaxies inside
Each star a memory, each planet a dream
That orbits the void where his laughter once streamed.

We are the ones who must lift her chin,
Trace the constellations her tears have been.
Unmute the stories clenched in her fists,
Let her scars sing of how she’s resisted.
Our hands, her fortress against the cold,
Our laws, her shield against the greedy hold.
Our voices, a chorus against the night
No widow walks alone. We rise, we fight.

For her fight is the world’s unwritten vow
To turn survival into song,
And mourning into monuments of light
Each step she takes, a drumbeat in the dark,
Each breath, a rebellion sparking embers
To ignite the pyres of silence, till remembrance blazes
And the world sees her not as ash, but as flame.