Male Victims of Domestic Abuse
He was a rock.
Strong, tall, rough, boisterous, as happy as rocks can be.
A mountain really, with smooth patches, softened by eons of experience,
With frost scars from a distant past.
‘He will last forever’, they said.
‘He is so strong. He is the powerful one.’
But they didn’t know.
Male Victims of Domestic Abuse
They didn’t know, that:
Every day, the rock was fighting.
They didn’t know, that:
She was the hurricane of insanity.
Screaming at him, tearing off parts of the solid facade.
She was the tornado of destruction.
He never knew when she would hit.
He never knew what ammunition she had picked up on her path of destruction.
They didn’t know, because air is invisible.
Male Victims of Domestic Abuse
They didn’t know that she would always find a way.
To force entry into the frost-scar.
To violently insert poisonous pellets of ice,
Which would break the frost-scars wide open.
Which had made his mountain-top crumble, and eroded his slopes.
Male Victims of Domestic Abuse
They didn’t know, that the hurricanes hatred was an obsession.
It was her sport, her past-time.
Because he was a rock. Because he was a mountain. So he could not move.
He could not defend himself.
He was the strong one, he was not permitted to rebuke.
So she was tantalizing, hunting, hurting, sometimes for a change, whisper warm spring winds. Soft air playing with the bleeding scars.
And he could not move.
Male Victims of Domestic Abuse
They didn’t know that after a couple of days of silence.
She could not bear it any longer and she would vomit her debris,
Violently, spew it all over him.
He could not even open an umbrella.
And still they didn’t know.
He had no bruises, the cuts invisible. The frost-scars, just frost scars.
But this was just the beginning…