a surveyor/accountant/writer/rewriter/listener/observer of ugly histories-a poem as an act of writing a past story, not a (his)tory
“our families have ugly histories”, a friend tells me
when i tell her of my father’s pride over having slapped
his wife. he advocates to newly wedded husbands
the need to slap their wives, if the wife hasn’t informed
of her whereabouts to them when they are out of the house at 10 pm.
my father’s masculinity is so fragile,
his anger so volatile
that he sees his lack of information
about an evening of my mother’s whereabouts close to 10.00 pm
as reason enough for him to slap her.
he is slapping the anger he inherited
from his father.
“our families have ugly histories”, she tells me
when i tell her of my father’s pride over having
slapped his wife. my mother’s love is so blind
that she sees her lack of having informed him
as reason enough to be slapped by him.
my family has ugly histories.
my grandfather beat my grandmother multiple times.
my family has ugly histories.
my father beat my mother, once.
my family has ugly histories.
my father banged my head against my brother’s.
my family has ugly histories.
my father beat my childhood into adulthood.
my family has ugly histories.
love-
this word-misused, reused, abused,
and i ask my mother if she would be okay
with my brother beating his wife tomorrow,
if i beat my wife tomorrow. i ask only her because
my father presumably will. how can he oppose an act he has committed. she does not answer.
childhood, this lost experience in the face of abuse.
parenting, this broken experience in the face of punishment.
love, this performed experience in the face of power.
duty, this reminded experience in the face of compulsion.
sex, this dominated experience in the face of marriage.
done.
i am done
building ivory idols out of my father’s reputation
which is lost to him being his version of manhood.
of his honour so scathing it only leaks into my wrongs.
he slapped her.
i was away.
he slapped her.
i was away.
they hid it.
i was away
my family has ugly histories
and i was conceived with the weight of violence
weighing down my mother’s shoulders,
her breasts sagging with the weight of histories
as she fed me,
disjointed experiences of a taught love
which has shaped my actions of violence.
how can i ever forgive
the inheritance of their love
which i find in me.
i am the result of the mistakes
they have committed, the saved experience
of the ones i have not yet committed.
i hope i can save myself from myself,
or maybe, i need to be protected
from myself.
i see me becoming him
and i wonder with the innocence left in me
of how violent this love is.
in my family,
they don’t tell stories.
because when stories are told,
histories are written.
their histories are
shameful. i will write them
even if they don’t tell me, even if i don’t know them,
i will write them
by listening closely to the silences in people’s voices.
