Click, the sound of the indifferent gun cocking back.
That’s the last thing she heard before they shot her.
But that’s not the last thing the world heard from her.
We forget and travel in a herd
So the lines that separate get blurred
We let them just take the last word
And it’s a little absurd, and a little backward,
That we should be censored, Shot.
But excuse me, sir:
Malala Yousufzai was fifteen.

Before, she said:
We scream through and through
and through. Not enough desert sand
can be stuffed down our throats to keep the words from flowing.
We band together to fight in sisterhood.
We have no money but we are richer than most.
We have the words that affect the mind that thunder through the hills, that shakes the roots of institutions
the words that change the world.
“I think of it often and imagine the scene clearly. Even if they come to kill me, I will tell them what they are trying to do is wrong, that education is our basic right.”

The Taliban hissed:
“Yousafzai is the symbol of infidels and obscenity.”
Treacherous words. Serpentis.
Encasing her, encircling her.

They hunted her down,
like she was an animal, subhuman.
They had her surrounded and
they stopped her yellow schoolbus.
And the masked gunman shouted “Which one of you is Malala?”

Where identity means death, instead of
that first day of school where you shyly say I am Malala.
Where you tremble to say your name for fear they were listening for it.
Where things are better protected behind closed doors.
Malala was silent.
He hissed again: “Speak up, otherwise I will shoot you all.”
And he would
just so he could stop the one girl.
The fifteen year old girl who had power against Goliath.

When they shot her,
they forgot that words stick,
to the paper they were written on; to the ears that were listening;
words stick and voices are heard for centuries.
I am Malala.
The girls chant from all around the world
I am Malala
because her voice lived on
I am Malala
and she lived on.
I am Malala.