Misaddress - Glennise Ayuk

the popular opinion hovers like a low stratus cloud,
a cumbersome disguise cloaks unwieldy
on the hearts and heads of the girls and women,
made increasingly so by raindrops of shame
that soak in,
adorning their foreheads like Indian jewelry,
and refusing to be wiped out or taken off,
so they have only to conceal their faces in shame
or retreat into low esteemed inner spaces
which then provides season and reason
for pauperization by the boys and men.
It seems an unspoken law here.
A Miss above 30, 35 is a pitiable disease.
An abominable curse even.
And a ramshackled Mrs. has no right to quit,
or place to run,
be she wedded to death itself,
or one of death’s tiny bastard seeds.
So you see, these women prefer Madame
a spinster at 40, or Ma’am but never Miss.
Especially if she bags a weighty pocket
or prestigious degree.
The sound of that misaddress
sprinkles those raindrops of chagrin like salt
and oh they stick like glue.
They are acrid sounds that tell of her
leprous disease,
which she will likely cure in urgency
by marrying a man far less, or maybe impotent,
and then live the rest of her days after 40 wearing
another curse cloak called barren.

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Glennise Ayuk (c. 1998) Cameroon
Source: African Writer