Exoneration
These days, when He watches her, she unconsciously moves
a fringe of hair to veil her eyes,
and even that is cause for His chagrin.
The nights He comes home wasted, smelling of beer,
He minces her with vile slurring words, incoherent bile
that slices holes and seeps into her soul
until she feels her entrails quiver.
If she dares to speak, He seizes that moment to play Lord and Master
and put her in her serfage place (though ironically, the plebian is He).
He screams at her, “What is that? What’s that you say?”
She yearns to know the shibboleth He seeks from her,
that magic utterance to take His wrath away.
But they are words not granted her.
Remission is not hers inside His house. And when the beatings begin,
she bows on knees enfeebled, soundlessly submitting.
From this she has learned she will receive a swifter castigation.
Afterwards - through the rumbling of His stirring in the bed beside her,
she lies stone-like, replaying in her mind
what has become a more and more familiar fantasy:
A young man, debonair and kind, touches sandy locks and moves them gently
to the side. He holds her face and smiles into her eyes.
Life with such a man, she thinks, will be for her one day,
exoneration.
Written March 18, 2014 /
for Shadow Hamilton's The Dark Side of Love Poetry Contest
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