Surviving Silence and gagging of society. A short story in rhymes about sexual assaults survivors, truth deflectors and justice defectors.#sexualassaultsurvivors #womensrights
#justice #silence #survivorsofsilence #humanrights #keepthefight #womensmarch #metoomovement
By Francesca Lombardo
A short story narrated in rhymes on injustice, on the arrowing effects of misuse of power, and failing justice systems
and society, on the justice defectors and truth deflectors.
FrancescaLombardo©September2018
And for that bent telephone box knifed, subjected and muted, there is always a 9 years-old kid character out there that goes by the name of Beatrice, who can find a way to help and give that assembled redness her voice, soul, identity, breakthrough and life again (reference: Beatrice and the LondonBus vol. 2). She is a Passing Stranger.
We should never be afraid of the Passing Strangers as Clarissa Pinkola Estès calls them, as for they know, whisper pebbles and pearls reverberating ripples and expanding circles in our soul when we toss them into a lake. They have been killed many times but their instinct, sense of knowing, pride has never died. They don’t need saviours or protectors; after trying to reach too many slippery, cold, icy, zombified, empty living dead’s hands, they learned to let them go and to survive; at times, even smile at the we-know-it-all-blisfull-ignorance-covered-up-by-arrogant-strikes-like-arrows-thrown-randomly-at-any-passersby …. just-to-disguise.
They know how to make the most of little things that others regards as just meaningless crumbs for apparently insignificant, unremarkable bluebirds who yet manage to sing loud and clear both in the tempest and in the storm as they have not time for things that have no soul.
Their spirit and emotions can reach and travel far and wide, surpassing the limitations of time, even behind the realm of physical things, breaking down barriers, obstacles, fences, and walls. They can bring us back to those unwanted, buried places that keep on resurfacing in some tearful, sleepless nights — so we can face the grief head on; never dwell and fight with it, just lead it to another place, a sacred one, gently, lovingly, till it dissolves and goes away and a new dawn can illuminate the path every morning, every day we lay.
They aren’t the evil monsters Ordog (Cit. character in Like the Wildfire Blazing) with his evil industrious, ingenious evil plan, neither Sol (Cit. Character in Like the Wildfire Blazing) with her bigger than anything physical archetypal bright immensity, yet physically charged seducing blinding feminine love and beauty, not fully formed human psyche, conscience and soul, or acquainted with humans’ intellectual and spiritual conundrums, suffering and pain.
They are the untamed mares, who have never won a race in the eyes of the ones who never truly cared or dared.
Sometimes they come; sometimes they go, sometimes they stay. They leave notes in the most unusual places; climb the tallest towers and gaze at the same landscapes where we belong, we hide, and we feel safe. We get a glimpse of them in familiar fan fairs among the cheering crowd; they are swallowed up by her infernal embrace, not before they have been stared by some we know-it-all-neighbouring-two-pairs-of-inquisitive-eyes.
As for “they” — the Passing Strangers, the Untamed Mares — know the currency of pain. They paid for it and know how dear and exhausting it is to wear that badge, that medal and trophy every moment, every day, sometimes with fear, sometimes with a hideous sense of shame — a pain no currency can erase, or trade. Unlike for the ones, who show off a trophy they never earned just to be celebrated like fake heroes of a never written tale.
Because the winding mountains, the tears, the monsters, the angry rivers, the charming witches, the abysses, narrow twisted lanes, the branchless trees, the tsunami-waves, the flowing blood, bleeding hearts, wounded flesh and the rotten bones that they’ve collected and have bumped into along the way, as it can only happen in the darkness of someone’s worse nightmare, it’s not something anyone or everyone, or at least most, can face and bear. Walking through and out of it yet remaining whole, unscathed, smiling, hopefully fair. Most just turn the other way, bury their heads in the sand. And, if forced to face them, they lay upon them a numbing drape; sometimes even try to make them embrace the kiss of death.
But they breathe and rise, unlike the ones who thrive in the byproducts of those medals, without having walked the way, without have never ever dug into the craves of their soul or the wondrous trenches of their hearts, deceiving the single one, or the woolly masses of sheep, who always need a strong shepherd to feel safe and make sense of others and themselves, callously duping them into believing in the truth they construct and convey. Them, the Passing Strangers, the Untamed Mares, they are the ones whom we want to hear, as they might have something to offer that can make us think, shine of a new light, gain a new insight, expand in a new way, and dare to bring to the surface what we naively believed was no longer there or we have tried, unsuccessfully, to put away.
And for the sake and in memory of those who have been wounded and framed, never tamed but never made it to other side, a significant and a significance that never blended to form a one, whole, poignant, memorable sign — whether dead or alive — we should fight their battles as much as we can and give them the voice, they never had. Because we must never forget that it is in this deceptiveness, where suffering lies and injustice thrives and our nights die. As only the ones who like to pay for things, can really understand what is like to be trapped and trying to live and breathe, with a feeble pulsing heart, in a dirty, hunted, cursed, dark and forgotten walled, cemented in silence, place. Yet, without never abandoning the dream, or fiercely hanging onto the hope, that one day they’ll be able to leave that behind, walk, fly out of it, and navigate across the oceans like an Intrepid Sailor, far and wide, in search of the truth, that never fails to make the heart, the mind and the soul feel whole and safe again.
Because, the ones who don’t like to pay for things and rush to join a shapeless, amorphous, endless queue, as my little kid character Beatrice says, will never render justice to the many Passing Strangers, the Untamed Mares, the Poets, the Wounded, the Lost, the Caged, the Imprisoned Messengers, the Scarred, the Sacred and the Scared.
Neither to the never forgotten Loved Ones, who walk behind us in our sleepless nights, to remind us how easy it’s to slip through the too tight or too loose grip of an already laid, carved, paved glorious, luminous, gilded, glittering, shining, golden path, to be then callously buried in it, judged, wronged, blamed, gagged and trapped by the very same people who yesterday adore them, tomorrow betray them. Not without wearing a wig and a toga of a shambled sense of justice and authority, learned by heart without knowing the true meaning of it; randomly, one day, somewhere.
And if words are beautiful signs or images to stare at, we must never forget the… (keep reading on …https://www.francescalombardo.net/blog-lombardo/item/49-the-passing-stranger,-the-intrepid-sailor-and-the-silent-captain.html