A Thousand Times

A thousand times she had risen
with the sun
Baking the bread of the day
Making lunch for a thousand guests
Washing clothes of a thousand children
she had once borne
Vacuuming a thousand steps
Falling down the stairs
under a thousand stars
A thousand times she had cried
in front of the mirror
Looking at her face
of a thousand wrinkles
Broken soul
Injured heart
Bruised body
Under a thousand layers
of blackness
Lost years
Twenty that felt like a thousand
A thousand times she had prayed for her husband
to never come back
to marry a thousand wives
And for herself
to never have another child
Another bruise
Another chore
Another world to carryon her weary shoulders
Another thousand worries and oven burns
A thousand times they’d say
She died young
That woman of twenty years
and a thousand smiles
and a thousand tears
and a thousand children
and a thousand bruises
and cooking pots
and wrinkles
Twenty years
they say she had lived
but they don’t know
that she was
a thousand years

*a poem I once published.