"On the Bodies of Women*"
       

Rose de Marie went for water from the river.
Early in the morning, the sun barely up,
she left the village with a heavy clay pot on her head.
Coming back, slowed by the weight,
she looked up and saw three men, guns in hand.
Putting down the pot, Rose de Marie tried to run, she tried to talk,
but the men were fast and spoke their own language.
They took her, one by one.
Gabriel Kasongo, her husband, who had just returned from the war in
South Kivu,
sent her away—she was used goods.

They fight the war on the bodies of women

Rose de Marie went to Alafu where the clinic was.
She was bleeding between her legs and it would not stop.
The nurse told her: you slept with the enemy,
We cannot treat you.

Asleep in the house, looking after Rose de Marie's baby,
Gloria woke when the soldiers broke down the door,
looking for food.
They waited while she cooked,
ate, took what they could carry,
and took her as well.
They kept her in the barracks for when they needed her.

They fight the war on the bodies of women.

Rose de Marie returned to the village
and lived with Prospere.
They both cared for the child.
When a high-level delegation asked her to witness in court
she agreed.
But the villagers chased her away with sticks,
saying she would bring ruin to everybody.

In Prospere's house there are now only old pe9ple.
The children have died and the fathers have gone to war.
The old people sit, bent over, without hope,
but Prospere feeds them like children,
the children she has lost.

Elodie sits under the Okoume tree.
She does not eat, her bones show through her shirt.
Her eyes are hollow, her words have dried up,
her teeth, yellow and black, clatter in her mouth.

She dreams the same dream when she closes her eyes
and sees how blood floods her garden and her house.
She waits without knowing what she is waiting for,
her days a dank cave with no light at the end.

They fight the war on the bodies of women.

*Based on a report from Thelma Awori after a visit to the Klvu warz one in the DRC, where
citizens of the DRC and Hutus from Rwanda have been fighting for land and resources

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Copyright © 2019 Ina Conradie All rights reserved
from Five Points
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission