This is not a poem, well maybe it is, but it isn’t a poem about streetlights and butterflies and metaphors about metaphors. It is about weak men and strong women and places where lost souls practice bravery.

I don’t know what she felt
I don’t dare claim to
But I know she cried, I know she fought, I know she broke in places she didn’t know she had, I know she scrubbed hard all the time praying her skin was the memory, I know she prayed, I know she prayed hard, I know it rained, both inside and outside.
But I don’t know what she felt.

I’m tired of excuses and stories about how men are built like tsunamis raised between rock and hard place leaving broken bodies in their wake. I betrothed the knife under my pillow to the souls of men like you, men like me.

Is there a crack in my spine, why can’t I understand that women are nothing but a sum of their body parts. Is it my fault for seeing them as everything we can’t be, from wishing well belly buttons where life comes from to men raisers and once in a while they beat us at our own games just to remind us that they can rustle at the top also but foundation is key. I’m tired of apologizing for men that cradle in the arms of a woman but still reach for her neck with their arms forgetting the reason he is off the ground.

But even if she was none of these. Even if she was built like a tsunami raised between rock and hard place. In his eyes her body will still always be a temple for his sins and sacrifices.