Violence against women is clearly not solved, not at all solved, and the reasons for it, which are controlling women’s bodies in order to control reproduction, are definitely not solved. Gloria Steinem
Death, a Saving Grace…
At dawn, the life light went out of the
woman’s abused body, it laid in front
of her the children she tried to protect…
she was a mother, she was a woman,
and she was a wife.
A coal oil lantern glowed against rustic
rough boards, shadowing the fragile
souls left behind in the damp shanty
where, she was a mother, she was a
woman, and she was a wife.
Laid to rest in a shallow grave in the
Louisiana heat, dug by a man with
moonshine seeping from his body; the
moon glowed upon soft damp earth
holding, what was once a mother, a
woman, a wife.
Tears burn hot upon the dirt-streaked
faces of her six children as relatives
who heard the shots from the long arm
barrel of hate ring out into the night
took them to their homes, she was
their mother, she was a woman, and
she was wife.
Drunk with evil spewing from his
tobacco-laced mouth the skeleton of
a father had shot his wife, because
she was pregnant again; she was a
mother, she was a woman, and she
was a wife.
No one will ever know beyond the
borders of Bayou Gauche, that mother,
woman, and wife will never return,
her death for her, a saving grace.
©2019.elizabethannjohnsonmurphree
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