poverty – The Spoken Word

For forty years she had endured

For this had been her constant state

Subjugation her present fate

A life without

A life without her dignity

Without expression of her own unique identity

Independence a foreign state

Voice stolen

Half living

Transparent

Flickering in the shadows

A life without a cause

With a history steeped in years of indoctrinating tradition

Conditioned to merely obey

The role of a woman

Of duty.

At home.

To stay.

There is no end to her husband’s torment

Her lord and master’s shrieking from his majestic throne

And it is from his threadbare and decrepit armchair

One imbued it seems with mystic properties

Symbolic

Emanating dread and fear

For there — the alpha dog sits

Basking

Preening

With all his arrogance on show.

And so her treatment continues

Oblivious of what’s right

An unequivocal dismissal

Made worse by an unfailing maniacal suspicion

An underlying contempt

Of someone that is not equal

A culture past, that expected submission

A constant demand to justify her inferior position

Ignoring the world outside

One that has moved on

Grasping to a past

A made up fantasy

Conjured

A fictitious memory

Unaware.

She shakes her head in sorrow and grief

And heavily she sobs

She shudders

Hands taunt in supplication

Reaching upwards

Following a path repeated a hundred times before

Pleading to the heavens for answers

“Why has this been my fate?”

And then a thought

Unbidden… enters…

And does not leave.

“No. No more.”

For now her daughter has fully grown

Safely, forging her own path

Free to explore

Able to make mistakes and missteps her own

Leaving our forlorn protagonist so full of pride

But also so so achingly alone.

Alone to face her nightmares

One that lasts from dawn to dusk

Every waking hour brings acknowledgement

Oppression

A way of life

Repeating endlessly

Unrelentingly

No escape.

“No. No more.”

Emboldened by her meek displays

Again he asserts

Again, a refusal of any permission

To simply allow her to wander outdoors alone

“A woman’s place is at home!”

But inside, coalesces a thought

Getting stronger and more certain.

“No. No more!”

A chasm to cross in darkness

One that she had to take alone

Summoning up reserves of strength

That she did not ever know

To renounce her life with her tormentor

To leave her family home

And all her worldly possessions

And their memories of a lifetime ago

To a cold and foreign Australian court

For a simple piece of paper

A stamped piece of officialdom

To file for her divorce.

“Yes. No more.”

So hurriedly with bags packed and nowhere else to go

To her daughter’s did she flee

Her life now perched in limbo

Dependent on a son-in-law indifferent to her cause

An impatience plain to see

Mark his face with troubled countenance

For her untimely imposition

That’s upset the tranquility of her new sanctuary

His home

“How long will your mother be here?” he whispers

“I understand, but I never did agree.”

“I know she is your mother…”

“This long? Really?”

“I have reasonable limits on my charity!”

But even away from home she felt constrained

For her journey was not yet complete

For in the eyes of her religion

She was not yet free

Her angry, ex-husband could justify

That he could lay claim on her

That it was his right

That sanctioned abuse could continue

For in his eyes he still owned her

To do so as he desired.

“But no. No more.”

The next step was the hardest

A painstaking and disagreeable process

That incredulously caused more terror

By putting her in a room again with her tyrant

Treated as a third party

An object for those far brighter

Who knew better

To seal her destiny

And though she nearly did break

Give up

Acquiesce

Subdued

Somehow, somehow

Her quiet voice

Remained firm

Did carry

And her case was finally made

Though it took twelve months for the Imans to grudgingly agree

What was painfully obvious for all to see

That there was no room for reconciliation

Love and duty no more than a fallacy

That the intervention order was real

That finally in God’s eye

She. was. free.

Surviving now on an old aged pension

Scrimping and scraping at the edges of modern society

She cannot afford modest housing

A future uncertain has she.

But it is a life that is now oh so different

At TAFE she helps in English language classes

To help others who face the same perilous journey

To help provide safe passage

To be their shining beacon

Against a darkening landscape

That threatens to stop the faint hearted

From withdrawing from their future

To succumbing

To their perilous fate.

Eugène Boudin (French, 1824 – 1898 ), Three Women at Trouville, c. 1865, watercolor and graphite on laid paper, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection 1970.17.142
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (German, 1880 – 1938 ), Women at a Table in a Room, 1920, etching with drypoint and surface etching, Gift of Ruth Cole Kainen 2012.92.721