Whispering Wall

We don’t leave because we’d rather be alive than dead, and we know if we run, you’ll come after us. You’ll come after us and kill our babies, too. Violence ought not to be so mundane as to be labelled domestic. Domesticity ought not to breed needless deaths. We have the vote now, we have our own bank accounts, and the right to a divorce, but we still walk home the long way, where there’s more light, keys ever-ready between white-knuckled fingers, no headphones in so we can hear you coming, texting our girlfriends as soon as we get inside and lock the doors…home safe…home safe…home safe…then we double-triple-check all the locks, the doors, the windows, the garage, the garden gate, set the morning alarm and keep an ear out for intruders. Is this agency? Watching what we wear, what we say, how we walk, how we talk, too loud…too quiet…laughing too much or just enough…pandering to prevent being noticed for all the wrong reasons…if our head as much as peeks above the parapet it will be wrenched away as a warning to others…always on trial, everywhere we are. Work, home, public, private, outside, inside…no reprieve from the potential for violence. Watching each other’s backs. Waiting for the call. Waiting for the next one of us to be hurt. Never knowing whether to stay or to run. Escaping just invites a new kind of hell. Surveillance. Stalking. Somehow they always find us, so we don’t leave. We don’t leave because you kill us when we do. You kill us. And you kill our babies, too.