I hit her again last night, it just happened, I didn't think about it, I just did it,

I watched her body bounce off the stove and her head just missed the granite countertop,

she watched us from between the doorway and I didn't have a clue she was there

watching her mom crumple on the floor while blood streamed from her nose.

I looked at her lay on the ground out cold, and wondered if I'd really killed her this time.

I knew some part of her was dead, but that was a long time ago ....

I guess I had just regained physical control.

~

Is that all it really is when we think about the physical abuse of another,

are we fighting for control in the only sickest manner that we know?

Why else such evil outcome upon the one we love,

what makes it right to hurt the closest part of our lives

to strike down upon that soul that we seem to count upon.

Is that really using them for the support they were first meant to be?

What about them? In all the callous delivery of pain and suffering,

why do the victims have to remain the most confused,

or are they really, perhaps they're not, perhaps they are simply

the victims they are meant to be, and society clouds that reality

by placing labels upon reasons and judgments upon excuse.

~

Yet still all the advertisements plead for the protection of the abused,

they ask us to open our eyes, to think again, to seek help,

they plead for the end to ihe injustice, and suggest the conversation

begin, rather than the blank stare of rage without any rationale within.

How do we explain damaging the vulnerable nature of the one we love;

where do we depend upon the solace of beating up our children?

~

I was 18 the day I was struck down by my brother's fist

because I had openly verbally abused my parents and he chose

to put me on the ground in a lesson he would later admit to me.

I remember at the time being shocked but understanding

he was protecting my parents from my own ignorance,

but the difference in him and our abusive society,

the distinction of his actions that shocking afternoon,

is he had no other choice, I had removed all options.

I needed to be slapped down like the dog I was at that moment.

~

But we are not a society of dogs, animals of lower intelligence.

We are human children whose values are gained by the closed fist

we are the confused that are  drawn to believe we are wrong

for whatever other reason would we be so physically slammed

by the ones we love, or those that once loved us as they suggested.

Perhaps that is the real confusion when that love seems to be lost.

It is not the needed moment of physical authority, far different than

the veiled angry, usurped result of inner turmoil and hypocrisy.

~

The public service announcements asking us to listen are not enough

Instead we really need to breathe in the beauty and elegance of those

whose lives we choose to stunt based upon our own inability to reason,

for otherwise their rules are designed to be read aloud by our closed fists alone.