Meryl Stratford           Hallandale Beach     (LD)
Her Education

Into the quiet classroom
of the mind comes flying
the furious teacher with a lesson
of fear.  This bullet
is not a bullet, it's merely
a word, something the mouth
makes for the delicate ear,
something the breath sends
that troubles the air, a ballet
of sound moving through silence
that explodes in an image as sudden
as death.  Where is the wound?
It bleeds in the minds of a million
grief-stricken girls.  They will be
pilots, doctors, warriors,
poets.  They will sit on the ground
in the dust, just to learn.

Originally published in the anthology Malala:  Poems for Malala Yousafzai, FutureCycle Press, 2013. ​​