Violence

Violence is a fist beatit screams silently,corrodes our children’sblood.………………………………………………………………………………………….I don’t remember the first time, was it your anger or mine that left us crystallised in glass at four in the morning, me with black eyes and you with half your life’s work destroyed: crumpled at our feet, while shocked neighbours swept and muttered of analysts. The tears didn’t flow and we stood face to face in ignorance. I asked you what I ‘d done and the refrain was always the same and I still don’t know what I did to make you send me away. Later there was a child between us, and you always said that the violence was my doing although the bruise marks on his skin were from your fingers. I remember standing between you two, you huge and insane with whatever symposium of rage was marking the territory and my son small blonde, so many bruises that he claimed while you tried to make him fit your idea of who you thought he should be. I remember your fist punching walls above my head and I’m not absolving myself of this, I could goad you like the sewer rat that you believed me to be, leaving mortal wounds that no body could see. Last night in dream I walked with you in the huge basement of an empty house and there on the wall was your painting. Children swimming in a rakish current green with weeds, the painting filled the room and suddenly the water swirled freezing cold around us, pale wet arms clutched at my hands and as I looked the painting was empty and there was no you.………………………………………………………………………………………….Last night the sun wasa red glimmer of firein a charnel sky,I oxidised the ashes.………………………………………………………………………………………….I woke with the sound of plates hitting wood and when I looked into the bedroom both your faces were red with the effort of the struggle. You were naked holding a pillow above her head and although I was so small I knew that’s what you did to make someone dead. You turned and caught the panic in my eyes, I shut the door and waited for the night to subside into morning...................................Violence is a fist beatit screams silently,corrodes our children’sblood.