Her marriage..

Sometimes life happens to be just that way

What really bothers her, she simply cannot say

The pain she swallows like a pill, there is no choice

Resentment, discontentment are all internalized, they don’t get a voice

The moving parts of her marriage are hidden from prying eyes

The truth bleeds inside, covered by an armor of lies

The gaslighting, the unrelenting erosion of self-respect

Are too complicated to explain, to be expressed

The surface presents a picture of perfection

She is lucky to have a supportive husband- is the perception

He lets her build her career, participates enthusiastically

In caring for the children, something you don’t often see…

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Sometimes she wonders if it is all in her head

She should not be unhappy, but count her blessings instead

Yet she screams silently at each veiled attack

At her education, her competence, she wants to lash back

When people insinuate her husband has supported her career

“I have built it on my own,” she wants to reply with a sneer

Every day she has to gather the courage to rise

Above the barbs of insult, sometimes their ingenuity takes her by surprise

The work-home balance that she tries to achieve

Garners no praise, in fact she is made to believe

That her homemaking and culinary skills are deficient

Who cares if at multitasking she is proficient?

*

What are her desires, or more appropriately “were”

These days she herself does not remember

She had thought she’d be the poster child for women’s liberation

How far from reality was her youthful estimation!

While one might argue that she could break free

She would hardly be someone to break up her family

So in her dysfunctional marriage she stays

As a shadow of her former self most days…