Quiet Dark Rooms

Tonight my thoughts return to domestic violence. This never-ending blight on our world grips my heart and won't let go. Violence, and even worse ---violence at home.

I read this poem online tonight at DomesticViolence.org.

Another Woman

Today another woman died
and not on a foreign field
and not with a rifle strapped to her back,
and not with a large defense of tanks
rumbling and rolling behind her.
She died without CNN covering her war.
She died without talk of intelligent bombs
and strategic targets
The target was simply her face, her back
her pregnant belly.

The target was her precious flesh
that was once composed like music
in her mother's body and sung
in the anthem of birth.

The target was this life
that had lived its own dear wildness,
had been loved and not loved,
had danced and not danced.

A life like yours or mine
that had stumbled up
from a beginning
and had learned to walk
and had learned to read.
and had learned to sing.

Another woman died today.
not far from where you live;
Just there, next door where the tall light
falls across the pavement.

Just there, a few steps away
where you've often heard shouting,
Another woman died today.

She was the same girl
her mother used to kiss;
the same child you dreamed
beside in school.
The same baby her parents
walked in the night with
and listened and listened and listened
For her cries even while they slept.

And someone has confused his rage
with this woman's only life.

-Carol Geneya Kaplan

Somewhere tonight, a wise-beyond-her-years older sister, really still a baby herself, climbs into bed beside her sleeping baby brother. Quietly she softly breathes, then listens to her parents angry shouts.

Grown-up, spoiled children living for the moment, always fighting for wanting more respect, more love, more things, more whatever ---yet always living so oblivious to the treasures they already have, hiding in those quiet, dark rooms.