MIXED MARRIAGES — 2

THE KITCHEN WALL REMEMBERS

You taught me how to cook the food you loved,
Indian spices dancing beneath my hands,
You showed me the flavours, the heat, the way,
And I tried so hard to understand.

I learned your food, I learned your world,
I learned the things a wife should know,
I stood beside you, watched and listened,
Never knowing how far down I would go.

And then one day I made a mistake,
A little too much, or not enough,
And the food I made with trembling hands,
Was thrown against the kitchen wall with force.

I watched it slide down slowly,
While something inside me broke,
The room was filled with silence,
But my heart had learned your voice.

Because the kitchen wall remembers,
Even if the years pretend,
It remembers every slap and punch,
Every place where I would bend.

I was only trying to feed you,
Only trying to be your wife,
But sometimes food became a weapon,
And sometimes so did you in my life.

I learned to cook your favourite dishes,
But I never learned to stop the pain,
I learned your spices and your customs,
While my tears fell down like rain.

Fourteen years is a lifetime,
When you’re counting every bruise,
When you learn to read a man’s footsteps,
And the mood he’s bringing through the room.

I had two beautiful daughters,
Two reasons to stay alive,
And somewhere in the middle of surviving,
I forgot I was still a wife.

You wanted the wife who cooked,
Who cleaned and stayed behind the door,
The woman who would swallow every insult,
And still give you more.

But I had poetry inside my bones,
And fire beneath my skin,
You married a woman with a soul,
And tried to keep her in.

I talk from real experiences,
I don’t invent the things I write,
I have dragged my heart on broken days,
And crawled back into light.

I know the taste of fractured bones,
The silence after a fight,
And I know exactly what it costs,
To finally see the sight.

I came to my senses slowly,
Fractured bones and broken heart,
I looked at what we had become,
And watched the pieces fall apart.

I had loved you through the ugly,
Through the damage and the scars,
But sometimes God lets you break,
Before He shows you where you are.

You said once that you loved me,
Do you remember that?
You said it like a promise,
Like a hand upon my back.

But then you added the word only,
And I heard the hidden lie,
You loved me only when I fitted,
What you wanted me to be like.

Only when I cooked your food,
Only when I played the wife,
Only when I swallowed anger,
And made your bloody comfort life.

Only when I stood behind you,
Never questioning your throne,
But I was never born to be,
Somebody else’s own.

So let me say it plainly,
Since plain words seem hard to hear,
I am not three steps behind you,
And I will not disappear.

Your customs may have followed you,
But they stopped when you came here,
And especially at my doorstep mate,
I make the rules in here.

You thought a ring could make me smaller,
Thought a marriage made me blind,
Thought you could drag another country’s rules,
Across my mind.

But I am not your servant,
Not your shadow, not your kind,
I am the woman who survived you,
And finally left you behind.

Maybe our marriage was disastrous,
Maybe love was dressed in lies,
Maybe I spent years mistaking duty,
For the look inside your eyes.

Maybe the broken woman I became,
Was the woman God had to find,
Because the wreckage of our marriage,
Finally gave me back my mind.

And if you ever say you loved me,
I may laugh beneath my breath,
Because love should never feel like,
Slowly learning how to live with death.

You said only once,
And darling that one word told me why,
For the woman you wanted died there,
And the woman I am survived.

This stories here 1 and 2 are my true story 1975 to 1989 ♦️♦️♦️♦️