‘What I Hate About Being A Woman’ by Soulani

I’m the kind of woman who hates spending time in the mirror
Too long as much as I hate photos or taking selfies, 
I hate Valentine’s because somehow it mostly seems to come when
I’m single and I hate having to attend family weddings because then
I’ll have to deal with people asking when I’m also getting married,
And I hate being called beautiful yet always having to avoid the back seat
On the bus and feeling like I need to apologise for my love handles and thick thighs
And for growing up in a world much smaller than I, 
And I hate how I can’t walk alone at night, 
How at any given time or place I could suffer from rape,
Or get video tapped being stripped, punched and kicked and I hate it,
I hate how my body is seen as an object, 
How ISIS keeps kidnapping girls and selling them off as sex slaves to its soldiers, 
Or how society has drawn borders of where we can and can’t go,
What we can and can’t be, 
And how love and submission have been confused with giving and obeying orders, 
How I pretty much have to spend half my life being taught
How to be a good wife only to end up with a man who hits me, 
And in the end, eventually kills me.

Solani Sibeso is a poet from Ndola, Copperbelt Province. She is a Pharmaceutical representative by profession. She started writing and reciting poetry in 2015 after pouncing on a poetry radio show dubbed Soul Tuesday that used to air on Joy FM. It was love at first sound, and she has been writing since and later joined The Poetic Juice Kitwe in 2018 and Colour Culture Lusaka in 2020 where she is currently learning and exploring other forms of literary art such as fiction writing.