Hobbled

Gone are the days
when she could walk on water,
now she stretches out to him
as if begging assistance –
takes him down
in the shallows.

Back then they married very young women.

Fettered to the foreman,
lipsy-tongued,
her womb fills with possums –
his dead children climb her
from the inside.

Wrote to him,
but he was lost on a whaling voyage.

She is reckless
driven away, easy as
sheep from a ditch –
outgrows her lover’s garments
and returns instead to the pockets
of her father’s trousers.

Useless girl
even if you say you felt nothing,
you were touched all the same.

First published in Wicked Alice