AustLit

My daughters trap me in a womanly furrow. Their infancies so lovely, when theyre all suck and ravenous touch, tiny scraps of flesh clinging like carnivorous  flowers, so helpless and entirely mine—How sad that they grow and turn their thoughts into secrets, they have sorrows they no longer tell me. Sometimes they're so far away, I feel afraid. What will I do then? I am still young. Where my husband is weak, I will be all endurance, my children shall look up and see a mountain. And yet he calls me soft and spoilt, he mocks my small lands. It is not just of him. And I am silent. I say nothing. to say the truth could kill him, is that not right? And I am strong enough. What other can I be? 
—Alison Crggon, Navigatio