To all of the Afghan village,

The winter day flowed fresh and alive,

Tucked smoothly past harsh echoes,

Of wretched days gone by.

A lilac Hijab rustles lightly

As a trembling, weathered hand,

Clumsily dances its fingers,

Over a glossy English brand.

Her eyes were undefineable-

Brilliant, earthy fires confined,

Just barely within purple rings,

Blazing in seas of ivory brine.

A strong brow and a straight, tanned nose,

Gave structure to her youthful face.

And a dark forest of sand-tousled hair,

Escaped its rusty, threadbare case.

Her pale lips brightened her dirt-caked skin,

And closed tightly over clenched teeth,

To hold back unfath'mable storms,

Of untold suffering beneath.

That youthful face bears wrinkles, and though

That scarf hangs not poor as shoddy,

Her strong, straight spine now hunches.

Time had ravaged her beautiful body.

But those eyes, now there's a mystery,

Though they glaze over with cloudy age,

Burn with the same undeniable passion,

As her past self does from that glossy page.

What allows this weathered woman,

Of pain and anger and fight,

To see the world with all the hope

She had in McCurry's sights?

The war-monger's child remembers,

The days of bullets and lashings,

Of fear in the constant face of Death,

Of praying to Allah in hopes of lasting.

She recalls well, like good sisters do,

Her brothers who fought against men,

Who fought for her and her future,

Dying for means to an end.

The survivor will never forget,

The moment of realization,

That life would go on regardless,

Of her and the state of her nation.

The Afghan girl on that glossy page,

With a story she's yet to give,

Her body may stray in the path of Death,

But her eyes, her hope, her fight- They live.