- There are things I cannot tell you
- about beginnings.
- An engagement is an exchange
- of intentions between two people
- and two families.
- A beginning.
- At this engagement party the two young people
- barely look at each other. You’d hardly know
- the party was for them among the many
- who have come for the food,
- the ritual, the talking.
- One sister is missing.
- He is usually careful
- not to draw attention like this.
- She will be alright
- for the wedding and all the photos
- will show her smiling like the rest.
- And her sons will be there
- among the others, her sons
- whom she is teaching
- about softness and yielding,
- as her father taught her.
- Her father who came to her house and looked
- a little past her shoulder and said,
- no one needs
- to stay in a house where a man raises
- a hand to his wife. Come home.
- And she looked equally
- long and silently at him.
- And, who knows why, she said
- kassie, Da, but I will stay.
- And who knows if that stopped him for a while
- or made him worse.
- Today she is not here for the engagement.
This poem was originally published in A Hundred Silences by Gabeba Baderoon (Cape Town, Kwela/Snailpress, 2006).
Read other articles in the series, 16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence 2012.
