On Sunday afternoons,
It was her father’s friend The family favourite;
“He’s so good with the children,” they said
The one who stole youth from the young.
And the cousin - the elder, boy, cousin
The one who liked her to play in his room
With the door closed.
No one noticed he was too old for “playing”
It was a Sunday night,
and he, a complete stranger to her.
She a young woman, alone in the night
Who carried within her, a world of possibilities
“What was she doing there anyway, what was she wearing?”
“Was she drunk?” the infamous they, the black hole, they would say
As they recount the story of what was taken from her,
On a library pavement,
Where I spent my childhood years drinking in the innocence,
of Judy Blume and Nancy Drew.
For her, it was Sunday mornings
In the house of God
Defiled by the devil himself,
Approved by the highest universal authority,
Protected by the pact of silence,
“This will be our little secret,”
“No one will believe you anyway.”
A little girl who had not been taught the language of emancipation,
still bound in her adulthood she cries;
“Mama, was I bad mama?”
Everyday for her, it was,
Her father,
Who took her as a wife At age 11,
Becoming the mother of three.
A mother to her own siblings
Before the blood and pubic hair of her womanhood
Had touched the fabric of her panties
As she lay in the big bed
And got to drive a big car at age 11
Breaking the silence
Shattering this non-reality
To see the scars inflicted by the cycle of abuse
That which cannot be seen when we silence the voices
In lies that we feed ourselves
To see that which does not always bear visible marks
As women walk alone in the dark
