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My marriage 

was fourteen years of hell, 

most days I lived in a daze.

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My life was a nightmare 

sometimes he had beaten me

so badly that I had to go to bed.

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He did that three or four times a year.

In 1985, the year of my miscarriage,

it had happened almost a dozen times. 

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In September of that year 

I had been coughing up blood. 

He held off sex for three days.

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I was hoping it would stop, 

but it always got worse

and I ended up at the hospital. 

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Where he told me what to say. 

It turned out I had a broken rib 

that was poking my lung. 

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I told them I fell downstairs 

for the second time in three months

and not even the intern believed it.

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But no one asked 

any uncomfortable questions

they just fixed me up and sent me home.

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My husband, Norman, 

knew nobody would think

a police officer was a wife beater.

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