The fear for my children festers always in my stomach like some malevolent ghost. The slightly...

The fear for my children festers always in my stomach like some malevolent ghost. The slightly missed curfews and the immediate drop of myself, the silence of phone calls and how the body starts to wail, I wonder whether they have been taken from me, whether I’ve lost them today or the next, whether I taught them to be fearful enough. That disparity between teaching young girls to be the brightest, bravest beings they can be and that ghost, held together by the terror and the grabbing and the sexual assault and the murder and that constant terrible ceaseless voice that whispers “you are so vulnerable, so soft and the monsters out there want to eat you alive”.