The Woman Who Kept Walking Poem by Martins Akhoeneto

She was barely a woman when marriage came,
A girl crowned with vows she was too young to name.
She entered with innocence, trusting his tongue,
Not knowing how quickly a promise can grow old.

He said, "I am AA." She trusted the word;
But truth came as AS with a child's first cry heard.
Their son learned the language of hospital walls,
While childhood was measured in crises and calls.

She watched him grow weary beneath borrowed breath,
Then held his small body in the arms of death.
She buried her son, though her motherhood stayed—
A garden of love that no grave could invade.

At home, love grew teeth; tenderness turned to rage,
So she tore herself free from that merciless cage.
She left with her scars, but she carried her name—
A woman still standing, though shattered by pain.

Four years passed. Then love came softly, anew;
For two years, she believed that its promise was true.
But tradition rose cold at the threshold of grace:
"No bride price for one with a child on the way."

She waited. She trusted. She carried the shame
Of customs that measured a woman by name.
Ten months later, another woman's invitation
Turned two years of promise to quiet damnation.

"My mother says divorcees cannot be my first;
My kinsmen will question the man I should be."
And there, in one sentence, her future was torn—
Another woman's wedding, from promises once sworn.

Still, she forgave him; still, love found a way,
And she gave him a child, though her heart could not stay.
Two children now bloom where her broken dreams lie—
Two stars in the dark, two reasons to try.

Now love wears the face of a married man,
Who gives what he can, and gives all that he can.
He shelters her children, brings warmth to her days—
Yet borrowed affection still walks through a maze.

But she is not the sum of the men who betrayed,
Nor the vows that collapsed, nor the choices they made.
She is the mother who buried, yet rose;
The woman whose scars taught her how courage grows.

She has walked through fire and refused to become ash;
She has carried her grief without worshipping its past.
And perhaps her true love is not waiting outside—
Perhaps it is healing, with her children beside.

For some women are broken by what they endure;
Others become rivers—wounded, yet sure.
And hers is the story no sorrow can end:

She lost many things.
She lost many men.
But she never lost herself.