No Excuse Now

Oh,
the pain when the penny dropped for the first time;
the dawn when it dropped for the last;
and the time in between 
when I thought this would mean
that the years of his shadow were past!

But,
the print of his thumbs on my limbs
still throbs.  And it throbs
to the depth of my sex.
And these beatings find space in the morbid waste
of the coldness of heart of his breast.

He is gone
but his shadow is long,
and its casting has cost me an arm and a leg
and a miscarried child
and my youth and my sight
and my freedom and hope;
and a length of clothes rope

which is noosed from the rafters
and creaks as the swing 
of his shadow still blocks out my light.

Blair H. Smith