Natasha Trethewey - Imperatives for Carrying On in the Aftermath

Do not hang your head or clench your fists

when even your friend, after hearing the story,

says, My mother would never put up with that.

 

Fight the urge to rattle off statistics: that,

more often, a woman who chooses to leave

is then murdered. The hundredth time

 

your father says, But she hated violence,

why would she marry a guy like that?—

don't waste your breath explaining, again,

 

how abusers wait, are patient, that they

don't beat you on the first date, sometimes

not even the first fe...