The Silent Chorus of Asia's Missing Daughters

The mourning sun struggled to shine over the good earth longing for uprooted seeds, O-Lan’s second bamboo shoot harvested far too soon. The eighth page of my American newspaper casually mentions Sixty Million Missing, as is our rage. Silent choruses of Asia's daughters during this thirty-year long monsoon of tears cry out in unison: Was gender our only crime, or was it the cruelty of order? (to form an even more perfect union, one child-no second chance, second child-no first chance.) Inhuman actuaries compute the fair market value of rare Punjabi jewels as the opportunity cost of their ultimate dowries, while surplus men pine. O blind new world proud of its amniotic intelligence, so unaware of the consequences of unnatural selection, last night I dreamt Heaven’s narrow gates welcoming millions scarcely born, its vast expanse unable to contain our aggregate guilt, the billions of us who remain.