POETRY: FOR GIRLS IN COATS OF FEAR

FOR GIRLS IN COATS OF FEAR

Your mother picked the night
And cut herself into dark halves
Then she found you on the other side.

You did not remember when sleep came
Cuddled you, and drove you faraway.
But you woke bruised on a bed of stone.
What would tomorrow bring?
You didn’t know because somehow, somewhere
Your father’s beast mode got activated, again.

You ran to your mother’s side
But she was the genesis
where everything war-like began.
You hated how Africa spelt women in lowercase.
A sick-ster nearby fought her husband, she won.
You loved her new freedom. She was a feminist.

A boy from the senior class called you pretty.
He must be different. You met love, unclad.
He opened your leg – pierced and bruised you
You cried, moaned, mourned, and bled.
But he left. He said he touched bitterness
Every time he forced his fingers inside you.
You touched your breasts, held your nipples
and remembered how he counted blessings on them
Indeed, men are trash.

Another man came, then another, and another
They were all snowflakes, leaving you wet.
At quarter to thirty, thirsty.
A man at your left brought water
You drank and dragged him to your right.
You called him Mr. Right and got married –
hoe-ly matrimony.

Years later, he returned to the left
where he belonged.
But you found something before he left –
your living portrait.
You showed her your mother’s grave
And how your fathers palm sat upon it.
She has perhaps wronged him again, in heaven.

You told her marriage is no achievement
But she already had whom she found different
She has become one of them –

girls in coats of fear.