For dancing in the streets
For being afraid of kissing
For my sister, your sister, our sisters
For changing old values
For the shame of poverty
For yearning for an ordinary life
For child labor and their crushed dreams
For this authoritarian economy
For this polluted air
For our city drying trees
For the Asiatic cheetahs’ anticipated extinction
For the innocent forbidden dogs
For the nonstop tears
For repeating this moment
For the smiling faces
For the students
For their futures
For this forced religion
For the imprisoned intellectuals
For the Afghan kids
For all these countless ‘for’s
For the meaningless slogans
For the ruins of these flimsy houses
For the peace of mind
For the sunrise after long nights
For the sleeping pills and our sleepless nights
For man, homeland, prosperity
For the girl who wished she was a boy
For Woman, Life, Freedom
For freedom.
More content from this blog
- Joe Grim Feinberg on Rethinking Colonialism and Imperialism – 12 January 2025
- Eternal Enemies. The 20th Century Origins of Vietnamese Sinophobia, by J Frank Parnell – 14 April 2019
- How Anarchists Saw the Iranian Revolution (Part 3), by Tom Goyens – 28 May 2026
- Indonesian Democracy Takes Another Hit, by Fadhilah Primandari – 22 April 2025
- Surrogacy and Bodily Autonomy as a Matter of Sexual and Reproductive Justice – 20 October 2025