A Left-Handed Red

night in pakistan is deafening

we walk behind lines and lines of men

in tiny plastic chairs

each with a cigarette in one hand and a lighter in the other

and their booming conversations

the sky glows red

lit behind clouds of petroleum and cigarette smoke

as if it is littered with the blood of all the women whose voices

were burned by the lighters in the left hands of men

and silenced in the night that was never theirs.

the sky grows blacker

and our day begins

american days are suffocating

we fold into the spaces they leave behind

falling behind squared shoulders

and beer cans held by thick and burly fingers

our mountaintops are red

underneath the sharp brown of grass

as if they are built upon the bones of all the women whose throats

were wrapped by the left-handed fingers of men

and silenced in the day that was never theirs.