I never knew her
An abused woman connects with the grandmother who had been battered to death and the legacy she wants to share.
I never knew her belongs to the following groups:
Current Issues, New England and WMGI never had the chance
to know her, to feel her,
to drink in her sweet fragrance,
the one which was hers alone to own.
I was too young and her song
had been stilled long before I became aware.
Yet my uncle cried when, as a young woman,
he saw me with long tresses tied in a braid,
“your air is hers, you look so much like her”
and gently held my hand as his eyes misted in memory.
Later still I was told, forever and again,
how much I was like her,
how I carried her essence within me,
and I trembled . . .
for the hand that stilled her breath
was her husband’s,
and well I knew the bite a lover can make -
within my core, my soul spinnings,
my hand reached out through the misty years
to join hers, to listen to the message
she needed to pass down, and
in the softest of whispers she murmured,
“Leave him, my dear – learn from my shattered skull,
for even unbroken, it was no more that tattered pieces,
hear from the ear ripped from my head,
speak words of freedom with teeth
knocked from my mouth – yes, you may be as I was
but yet you are more, and the power I denied myself
is the legacy I pass down to you,
so no child of ours will ever again
go homeless, unloved, misunderstood . . .
so no child will be stooped with premature age,
carrying raw bruises from sharp words and fists -
my daughter, on my whispered words of freedom, fly.”
Ushna Sardar
nice piece of writing!
flower68
almost shed a tear on this.so sad and so beautiful.