• There are things I cannot tell you
• about beginnings.
•  
• An engagement is an exchange
• of intentions between two people
• and two families.
•  
• A beginning.
•  
• At this engagement party the two young people
• barely look at each other.  You’d hardly know
• the party was for them among the many
• who have come for the food,
• the ritual, the talking.
•  
• One sister is missing.
•  
• He is usually careful
• not to draw attention like this.
•  
• She will be alright
• for the wedding and all the photos
• will show her smiling like the rest. 
• And her sons will be there
• among the others, her sons
• whom she is teaching
• about softness and yielding,
• as her father taught her.
•  
• Her father who came to her house and looked
• a little past her shoulder and said,
• no one needs
• to stay in a house where a man raises
• a hand to his wife. Come home.
•  
• And she looked equally
• long and silently at him. 
•  
• And, who knows why, she said
• kassie, Da, but I will stay.
•  
• And who knows if that stopped him for a while
• or made him worse.
•  
• Today she is not here for the engagement.
•  

This poem was originally published in A Hundred Silences by Gabeba Baderoon (Cape Town, Kwela/Snailpress, 2006).

Read other articles in the series, 16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence 2012.