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With the UN Women’s statistics on gender-based violence showing that nearly a third of women have suffered abuse in their lifetime, with cases rising during crises such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Zimbabwean journalist Catherine Murombedzi has come up with a poem denouncing the vice.
The poem also comes after Musasa Project, a leading organisation that offers shelter and counselling services to victims of gender-based violence in Zimbabwe, noted that GBV cases rose significantly in 2020 after the onset of the pandemic.
Below, Spiked Online Media produces Murombedzi’s poem:
Love shouldn’t hurt
Forlornly starring in the dark
Bedtime becomes the replay session
How can I rest?
How can I find peace?
How do you expect healing to take place?
Right next to my tormentor,
I am expected to rest
Tokenistic apologies drummed up, again and again
Amplified to the family gallery
A hen, a goat, a cow, apology on animal legs
Handed over to say “I am sorry…”
Materialistic apology without behaviour change
Commodities don’t heal the bleeding wound of several claps,
Blows, a missing tooth, now limping
Deeds, not goods, ease the pain
The first clap was a decade ago
Your food was served cold
You claimed, arriving dead in the night
How could I serve warm food that at wee hour?
I have stayed, for the sake of my children
Watching mom battered they absorb pain
Addressing symptoms never eases root cause
The escalating beatings
will result in death
Hear the silent cry of the woman who now weeps in the dark
The pillow absorbing the tears
The scars cutting deep with each tokenistic apology
Love shouldn’t hurt
END