12/30

on the same day, two women I know post poems that reference men hitting them. i don't know details but it got me thinking in general and then this happened. It's all over the place but my laptop is about to go night night, so this is it. 

i never understood the kind of person
who can turn the bedroom
into a boxing ring, 
the kind of person who flutters knuckle kisses
against clavicles and cheeks,
make bloodshot eye, 
dark rainbow jaw, 
loosened jangle of teeth. 
how they can stomach
digging the pulp of a woman
from beneath their fingernails, 
watching blushed trust rinse away in the sink, 
how they can hear anything other than the echo
of their fist
splintering
another persons pride for the rest of their lives.
I can not fathom how much they must hate themselves,
to be so vile stench,
so much tainted meat
that they figure they need to break
or bruise
or batter in order to cope,
so rotted-lung-moldy-ventricle of them
to press booted gout against a woman’s pulse
—a laced threat
—a noose-knot tied kind of vow
—a death promise for their humanity, 
each hit a shovel to their grave. 
i want to thank these women
for not wiping the violence against them
from their swollen flesh
by being brave enough to know that silence
is an infinite sucker punch, 
the rumble from their tongues will be the ultimate upset,
they—the comeback kids
with palms full of cemetery
will give blank paged obituaries, 
screaming eulogies,
blood all over the crumbling headstone —a ritual, 
and they will not be alone.