Reading Time: 2 minutes
An intense woman-centric poem, about love, abandonment, parochial patriarchy and more, exclusively for Different Truths.
The painted bridge On either side The great divide Between what was and what is And all that had ceased The river guards her mysteries Even as the waters continue to flow Turbulent at times oh so slow at another Unchanged and yet so different In every waking and sleeping moment The bridge under which we met Rendezvousing in secret On cold moonless nights And scorching sundrenched afternoons When we became one The crickets were quiet As if they have lost their melody Even the beetles were still From the sweltering heat Nothing dared to venture outdoors And yet the whispers spread Surreptitiously at first Like the slow rustle of a snake Beneath the thick grass blades Human sharks that could smell a drop of blood My lover disappeared The coward that he truly was As quick as the morning mists Leaving me behind with child The unwanted seed of a worthless fruit Shunned and alone Nowhere to run… no place to hide Not a single kindred spirit to guide And I…stubbornly refusing to give up Against mounting odds Completely forsaken My immature body broken From the trauma of childbirth Education was my only passport To find meaning and support My beautiful baby is old and wise Beyond her young years Together we created a home Across the painted bridge For the women like us labelled as tarts We are now a force Questioning the moral authority Of misguided patriarchy Meant to subjugate the female form To perpetuate the myth of a perfect man More often than not Veiled concepts of misogyny Relentless in their attacks on the divine feminine Silencing our voices And caging our bodies The high and mighty From all levels of society Now knock on our doors To be educated in the ways of the world To find and defend our hard-won freedom.
Visual by Different Truths
