blacklace

UPDATE on last nights blog:
this is the murder/ suicide that happened in harper woods that you are seeing all over the local news. this woman, that i heard scream, was shot three times, even once in the face. she screamed all through the gun shots. shes dead now. her ex husband shot her with a hunting rifle on her own front porch. then killed himself.
I work at a domestic violence shelter in mount clemens. so this kind of stuff gets to me more than others i suppose. and it happened on the street i live.
remember this when someone makes the ignorant comment "why doesnt she just leave him" about a domestic abuse situation. its of course what you should do in a domestic violence situation, but its also the most dangerous time in that relationship and the time a woman is most likely to be killed by her partner, when she leaves him. so it takes a lot of courage and planning, support etc.
im posting this poem for her, even though i didnt know her, please read it.....

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