I live like a glass piece mounting a wall—
A figurine, all beauty and meek.
I watch as the butler cleanses the parlour,
I watch as he fixes the leaks.
I’m but a doll strapped to the corner:
“Sit still and pretty. Don’t speak.”
What do you call a stone with a pulse,
A stone that could eat and breathe?
But what do you call a girl with no tongue—
A girl who can watch but not speak?

He comes and he goes, my love, my all—
His kith and his kin, with their whiskey and gin.
But what they discuss with raucous laughter:
“A girl whose blouse is of fabric silk-thin.”
A girl like me, like their daughter.
“I wish I could bend her over my shin!”
One cries, and they chime with him.
So I sit at the table with my lips pulled thin—
For what could I do? I’m a glass figurine.
Fan my face, strain a smile, and join in.
My voice I push down, hold in, smother out,
And turn traitor to the race I was born in.

---

Author’s Note

“Glass Figurine” is the closest image I could draw to the experience of being a woman in a patriarchal society that treats female objectification as something normal — or worse, just a joke. The inability to speak up, for fear of being judged or losing the title of “cool” or “chill,” is deeply alarming as it feeds the cycle of silence and quiet complicity.

The metaphor speaks as much to the voiceless nature of the inanimate as to the fragility and meek beauty associated with a ‘decent’ or ‘desirable’ young woman.