Sarah opened her eyes before the Sun came up and rushed to the kitchen. Limping, with quiet moans.

Last night, like a usual one, was another hell for her. He had his dinner and snatched her hair while she was doing the dishes, dragging her to the bedroom. Doing what he pleased with her.

Was she a part of the pleasure? As much as a gum is, when dreadfully chewed and crushed inside mouth.

She doesn’t cry or resist anymore. After years of walking bare feet on hot coal, she became used to the intense burns she had to process every single day.

He laid back on his bed, breathing heavily and pushed her on the ground. He had told her on the first night of their marriage that that’s where she belongs.

Catching his breath, he commanded her to bring him a glass of milk.

She was dead. Almost.

But feeling alive had become an alien concept to Sarah, anyway. She rose from the dead, walked towards the kitchen, like a corpse she had become, and heated the milk she had kept aside on the counter. She handed over the glass to him, and was about to turn and walk away when he poured it on her. All of it.

“Too hot, you b**ch! Worthless piece of sh*t!” he shouted. He grabbed the cane next to his bed and pleasured himself, again.

Was there any difference between this pleasure and the earlier one?

For him? No. He had established his dominance, like he wanted to.

For her? No. Dead bodies are incapable of feeling anything.

The hot milk was all over her, dripping all over her clothes, but not one single sigh. It burned skin on her bare arms. She quietly took the glass away, with her new, yet old, injuries. While he went to sleep, she cleaned the floor. She changed her clothes and laid down in a corner on the ground. “Where she belonged.”

After staring at the ceiling of the room, and forcing herself not to shed tears, since it will all be pointless waste of time, again, she fell asleep.

She reached the kitchen, prepared breakfast and packed his lunch. All the time suppressing her moans, because however hard she tried mentally, the physical pain reminded her of what had happened.

It was after he left for work, that Sarah had time to herself. Finally, an attempt to feel peace. An attempt.

Sitting by the window she looked at the vast sky. Smelled freedom. She dreamt of a world where being a woman was not equivalent of being an object.

She thought of the brutality of her husband and her life, and pensively, looked at the knife in the kitchen. A tool which could pierce life out of her, if she wanted, and release her of her misery. That thought made her feel peaceful – a feeling she had become unfamiliar with. There had been times when she walked towards it, but the soft cries of her infant waking up from his sleep, stopped her.

The second kid, he was. And the only one alive. She thought of the little Sarah she carried for nine months. She smiled as she imagined her growing up in her dream world. That was her only escape from this harsh reality.

But her guilt trapped her back, again. She reminisced of that fateful afternoon.

Her water broke and she was all alone at home. Her cry for help, reached the neighbourhood and women came to assist her delivery. And when she brought a life in the world, nobody congratulated her. Because they all knew what was ahead of her little innocent daughter.

They all saw themselves in Sarah, and couldn’t carry that burden anymore. They left her alone.

There were three more hours before her husband came back from work. She held her first child, a part of her, in her arms and looked at her tiny eyes. She was asleep.

Sarah decided it would be the best time. To do it in her sleep, so she never have to see that the person who brought her in this world could do this to her. And maybe her better than someone else, right?

Sarah asked herself again, “Right?”

There was no answer. She looked at this new life, destined to suffer and rot, and held her in her embrace, and in her loud sobs, hugged her tightly, to lifelessness.

And dreamt. Of a world where she survived, grew up to be a human, not a thing.

When he came back home, he looked at her holding an infant in her arms and said “What is it? A girl, like you? Worthless piece of sh*t , you are. Throw her outside, or in the dumpster in the next street. I don’t care, just get rid of her.”

“She was born dead” Sarah replied.

“Thank goodness, the Lord showed me some mercy! Now, make me some dinner. Fast.”

And she did. That evening. And the one after that. And the one after.

A knock on the door pulled her out of her past. She knew it was him. And it was time to repeat.

To live, like a corpse.

******

More than a celebration, today is a reminder. To not let biological differences come in the way of humanity. And to not let any Sarah suffer, to not let any little Sarah die like that.

To make sure that the world dreamt by all those Sarah’s, decades and centuries ago, comes to life now. She and her daughter didn’t survive to see it, but it is a dream worth to be chased by all.

Today is a reminder to respect humanity, to respect life.

Happy International Sarah Day.