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Not for love
by Terrie Leigh Relf
She never understood
why women filled their
pockets with stones,
walked into the sea,
or why they threw
themselves off cliffs,
drank poison, shaved
their heads, donned robes
of sacred orders, or
imprisoned themselves
in religious tomes.She never understood why
some took their last meals,
their last baths in blood,
or why some whispered
“I did it for love,” when
she now realizes it couldn’t
have been love--or the madness
of its loss--that led them to these
horrendous acts.It was something more leaden
than stone, more jagged than
cliffs, more virulent than
poison, more vulnerable than
a smooth-shaven scalp or a
soul laid bare to heaven,
more savage, more cruel,
and wrought with even
more despair than the final
choices these women made. . .He gave them false hope. . .
© Relf, 2010