i beg your pardon
i am told to confess my sins
to the male chosen ones
who have been given the power
by the other male chosen
to absolve me
i look at my sins with great curiosity
n-dimensional breathing
in my cells
echo
the intimately known mystery
my baby is out of my womb
out of my body
quiet for a moment
then crying
i stroke my son’s cheek featherily
hello my precious i greet
him
the words
he has heard many times before
he stops crying
opens his deep black eyes
finds me
we look at each other
i know his face
even though
this is the first time i see it
terror triptych
1.
we watch you
rape her
we watch you
dismember her body
we watch
every night
2.
girls for sale
girls for the taking
3.
terror:
the use of
organised
intimidation
staying alive
she wakes
her eyes cannot find me
she screams
scratches her arms
looks for sharp objects
scratches her body
till it bleeds
cries
falls
asleep
wakes
looks for drugs
alcohol
cigarettes
anything
screams
scratches bleeds cries
sleeps
wakes
scratches bleeds cries
sleeps
i wait
wait
finally
she wakes aware
meeting
her hair a lion’s mane
her face neither old nor young
her smile knowing
her eyes through-seeing
she senses a
tiny movement hiding close by
universally
united
under the sky of
quiet constellations
silencescream
in silence
you tell me your story
i see the scars
looking into your young eyes
i notice
there is beauty but no youth in them
the bloodstained images
you’ve brought to life
stay with us
we fall asleep regardless
-----------------------------
your screaming wakes me up
i run my fingers through your hair
kiss your eyes open
hold you
your body relaxes
you apologise
i shake my head slightly
as if it’s nothing
waves whisper the shoreline
to life
ecowoman
she is unaware of his
presence
much older than him but he cannot tell her age
there is something timeless
about her
old trees look like that
one knows they have been around for a while
yet they have the incredible
life force within them
the thoughtless cut them down
but others let them be
even desire their life giving
comforting presence
her hair is mostly dark brown
with the shimmer of silvery
threads
long curly
messy
untamed
life matters
“I am trying for the life of
me to figure out how to communicate what I have seen and heard in the Democratic Republic of the Congo .
How do I convey these stories of atrocities without your shutting down, quickly
turning the page or feeling too disturbed?
How do I tell you of girls as young as nine raped by gangs of soldiers,
of women whose insides were blown apart by rifle blasts and whose bodies now
leak uncontrollable streams of urine and faeces?
Nadine closes her eyes and
says something I cannot believe I’m hearing. “One of the soldiers cut open a
pregnant woman. It was a mature baby and they killed it. They cooked it and
forced us to eat it.”
Alfonsine tells me she was walking through the forest
when she encountered a lone soldier. “He pressed his rifle on the outside of my
vagina and shot his entire cartridge into me. I just heard the voice of
bullets. My clothes were glued to me with blood. I passed out.
The perpetrators include the
Interahamwe, the Hutu fighters who fled neighboring Rwanda in 1994 after
committing genocide there; the Congolese army; a loose assortment of armed
civilians; even U.N. peacekeepers.
Before I went to the Congo , I’d
spent the past 10 years working on V-Day, the global movement to end violence
against women and girls. I’d travelled to the rape mines of the world--places
like Bosnia , Afghanistan and Haiti , where rape has been used as
a tool of war. But nothing I ever experienced felt as ghastly, terrifying and
complete as the sexual torture and attempted destruction of the female species
here. The violence is a threat to all; young girls and village elders alike are
at risk. It is not too strong to call this a femicide, to say that the future
of the Congo ’s
women is in serious jeopardy.”
(Eve Ensler, 1 August 2007)
the
end
on
the other side of suffering
the
last female
honour
as the world collapses
i walk through it
as the bomb goes off
i read a poem
the policy of yes
in crimson suffering
liquefying
i go to work
pretending
i am solid
laughter
i come in quietly
the house breathes to its own rhythm
hello granny dearest i say softly
she does not recognise me
but i know what to do
…i laugh
oh agnieszka she smiles
and dozes off in her armchair
***
a different
language
awake
my heart moulds itself
into the shape of survival
© Agnieszka Niemira