Christina Tom

About the Poet

A heart-wrenching poem, sensitive and delicately depicting the issue of female homicide. The sheer disrespect of a precious life that is nourished with blood and toil in the mother’s womb. The terrified mother’s soul cries and screams, which gave birth to a girl child – knowing how killing her new born girl would be like ripping her heart out and tossing it in air while it’s still warm and throbbing.

Christina felt that the event “was simply beautiful”. Words are very powerful and they can reach all segments of society. Poetry itself can bring out the inner pain that bothers us. She loves the Poetic Heart the way it already is, but would like to see more schools participate and would love to participate again next year.

Discrimination

I run my fingers gingerly,

Over the pale, limp body,

Of my child, my darling newly born,

Her lips are purpled, mouth wide open with silent screams,

Her fragile eyes, delicate nose, all filled with mud

My first born, my heart and my soul,

She lies still in my arms,

I clutch her tightly against my chest,

And rock her back and forth,

rivers of tears flowing silently down my face

I sing the lullaby that I had composed,

For my angel when I had come to know,

That there was a second heart beating inside me.

But now that heart, has been forcefully stopped,

My sweetest child! Buried alive, for being a girl

I hear footsteps coming toward me,

Toward the corner where I sit devastated,

With my darling, her body desolate of her soul,

I look up to find, the demonic father of my child,

Glaring down at me, reproachful disgust colouring his eyes

Fear rises up in me, I stand up to flee,

I shouldn’t let him near my child again,

A blinding blow hits my face, a ringing in my ears,I stagger back

I cry out; My face! It’s on fire!

“Choke on acid for giving birth to a girl!” he hisses.

My newborn baby and I, neither of us did survive ,

Cursed be this land, where victims are dead and discrimination alive!

About the School

Our Own High School, Al Warqa’a, is a GEMS school created in 2005 as a single shift facility for boys of ‘Our Own English High School, Dubai’ which was established in Bastakiya in 1968. ‘Our Own’ Al Warqa’a shares the same vision, ethos and work culture that has given the parent school its laudable presence.  ‘Our Own’ Al Warqa’a now has 4,700 students and 218 teachers.

The school is well-recognized for the quality of its academic achievements and the service it provides to students and parents. Our educational priorities are based on current trends that affect education globally, on the shared leadership and management agenda that is consciously emerging across GEMS schools.