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Writer's pictureZanele Chisholm

To Bear the Burden of an Unbearable Woman

I remember the day you called me


I remember the day you called me

My father’s child


Told me that I was no different

You said that I was the reason you couldn’t dream


That I caused the wrinkles in your skin,

the bruise of your cheeks,

And slits turned to scars

on your left arm


You said that I was the source of all your pain

That resentment and age had grown you weary and thin

But I was the reason you would die young


And how could something like me come out of you

And How was it that she was the one

and not you


Why does he love her

but not you

But why does he hit you

and not me


And has your body become

nothing more than a vessel

to bear

unbearable women

women who will barter for their own

the beauty

That he had once stole you for


And have you given your life to a boy

caught in a fisher’s net

Have you sold blue-lit veins

To cocaine cells

And do your daughters reap the sows

Bonded through poverty lines


And Why doesn’t intoxication last longer

than the nighttime

,as he does,

And Why couldn’t the sun burn you out

like the words spit from his mouth


Why couldn’t I have been the sun

Why was there

no one to protect you

from the man you

once heard as God


And where was God?


Where were the gracious whispers

of time that stole your fulfillment?

Why was there nothing waiting

on

the other side of that track?


And where did you go?

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