What she knows is her room. She never leaves it. She never sees it. The woman with the thick matted hair who looks on into the darkness and sees nothing, hears the slow metallic shriek of the heavy iron door being pushed into placed. The woman with the milky eyes feels the precise footsteps of weighted boots on the floor, hears the laboured breathing, smells the oil stained clothing. She does not move. She waits quietly as she always does, calm, collected, submissive. The tattered bloodstained rags that are about her person provide no solace. Too soon were they ripped and torn. Too soon was love wiped away and replaced with grease and oil. Once, she was a fortress. Once, she chose her fate and controlled her destiny. Once, she was a woman who felt the touch of little fingers on warm skin. Now that skin is marred and stained with struggle, with hate, and with rage. Her corner is her comfort. There, protected by thick walls of wet stone, she knows she is safe for a time. The woman who stands on legs of brittle shale wrapped in a thin leather coat; the woman without sight, sees her room. She sees the pipe that slowly drips water onto her desolate visage, she sees the cracks in the slab of cold stone that is the floor, and she sees that her constant guard, the door itself, is not without flaw. Once, she was a woman with sight who looked at the tender face of her child and who basked in the magnificence of a sky the color of her child's eyes. Once, she would remove the handle from its place and kill what has held her here so long, but she is no longer that woman. Now, she is beaten.
