Time to forget
The old lady rocks her chair in place, myriad lines etched into her face She’s not long for this life, she’s done her time – she remembers long ago when in her prime Young and pretty, so full of life, met a young man, became his wife But fairy tales aren’t real, they’re all in the mind – from then on her life was not very kind Four children and sags on her body to show the pain and the stresses that no man could know And her husband, once her valiant prince, grew tired of her, left – hasn’t been seen since Always a struggle to feed her brood, but she battled on whatever her mood Clothing them, loving them, reading them books, ignoring the neighbours’ judgmental looks As she let another man into her door, work of kind, so they wouldn’t be poor She knew of the whispers, she knew what they said, ignored it, let it go over her head I’m not a whore, she said to herself, as she hid a few dollars at the back of the shelf As her babes grew and flew