In South Africa, the sirens don’t sleep
they pace the streets like hungry dogs at midnight.
We call it gender-based violence, a careful phrase,
but the blood on the pavement whispers: woman.
We know the script before the story is told,
we see her face before the name is read.
Because too often it is her ribs counting bruises,
her silence stitched tighter than a coffin lid.
But somewhere a man swallows his scream whole,
taught that real men bruise quiet and heal louder.
He hides behind a jawline carved from “be strong,”
while his pain rusts unseen beneath the armor.
This violence wears no single body
it is a thief fluent in every pronoun.
Yet statistics lean like gravestones toward daughters,
and mothers bury futures instead of sons.
Call it what it is: a war in our homes,
where love becomes a loaded gun without a license.
Where power is mistaken for manhood,
and fear sleeps on the same pillow as hope.
We need a language sharp enough to bleed truth
to say women are dying, loudly, daily.
To say men are hurting too, quietly, deeply.
To say violence has a face, but it is not one face only.
Because when the headline has a gender,
we stop listening to the echoes behind it.
And in the spaces between what we assume
and what we refuse to see
another body falls.
Apr 4
Apr 4, 2026 at 5:00 PM UTC
In South Africa, the sirens don’t sleep
they pace the streets like hungry dogs at midnight.
We call it gender-based violence, a careful phrase,
but the blood on the pavement whispers: woman.
We know the script before the story is told,
we see her face before the name is read.
Because too often it is her ribs counting bruises,
her silence stitched tighter than a coffin lid.
But somewhere a man swallows his scream whole,
taught that real men bruise quiet and heal louder.
He hides behind a jawline carved from “be strong,”
while his pain rusts unseen beneath the armor.
This violence wears no single body
it is a thief fluent in every pronoun.
Yet statistics lean like gravestones toward daughters,
and mothers bury futures instead of sons.
Call it what it is: a war in our homes,
where love becomes a loaded gun without a license.
Where power is mistaken for manhood,
and fear sleeps on the same pillow as hope.
We need a language sharp enough to bleed truth
to say women are dying, loudly, daily.
To say men are hurting too, quietly, deeply.
To say violence has a face, but it is not one face only.
Because when the headline has a gender,
we stop listening to the echoes behind it.
And in the spaces between what we assume
and what we refuse to see
another body falls.
