She wakes up to the cries of her hungry child.

Another night another hungry tummy experience.

She hobbles to her baby’s cot,

And feeds her from a dry breast,

Before taking a cup of dirty water,

And heading off to what she calls work.

What work is this that takes five months to pay?

 

During the day in the sun,

A child throws away a half eaten bun,

And she gets on her knees,

Because hallelujah it is lunch time.

 

On her knees she thanks a God who never sees her.

On those knees she prays to a God who won’t talk back.

She thanks a God, who doesn’t see her suffering,

And who is deaf to the cries of her hungry baby.

 

She is tired,

She is hungry,

And were it not for her baby,

She would have thrown in the towel long ago.

 

But she fights on.

She scratches and crawls on all fours,

For she simply must live for her little angel.

 

So she calls the man who put the baby in her,

A man to whom she gave her heart then he left her,

A man who simply won’t answer her calls.

 

She sees the resemblance between the man and the God.

These two who she believed in,

These two who abandoned her.

These two who she believed loved her,

These two who betrayed her in incomprehensible ways.

 

She dumps the phone and gets back down on her bruised knees,

To talk to a God who won’t talk back.

 

That night after her baby falls asleep,

God sends down some rain.

He lives after all.

And she smiles because the rain soothes a growling tummy.

And for the first time in months she falls asleep with a smile on her face,

Because maybe, just maybe, there is a God who talks back.

 

She wakes up in the morning to light flooding through her window.

She slept all night.

Didn’t her baby cry?

She wakes to a flooded house and runs to her baby’s flooded cot.

Now she knows why she didn’t cry.

 

And with nothing left to fight for,

With the last joules of energy she has left,

She uses a rope as a stepping stone to heaven,

To meet a God who won’t talk back.