I don’t care what anyone says,
he is not ruthless.
He’s careless. Not ruthless.
Careless, as in “not giving sufficient attention or thought to avoiding harm or errors.”
This lack of attention
can be attributed to a busy work week, or an exceptionally stressful time.
He hopes—nay, expects—nay, assumes
That we will understand
These ‘rough patches’ he’s going through,
where he bought us these souvenirs of
destruction, disappointments and uncertainties.
Careless—as in, he could not care less.
How could we not understand a rough patch?
Living as we do with our wardrobes lined with that fabric?
I hear Skims® might be doing rough patches underskirts this fall.
Let me get this straight:
He’s humble about mansplaining,
Our ally,
Our champion of period poverty,
True connoisseur of ‘Does anyone have the right to sex?‘
He with his ‘it’s hard being a straight white man right now’.
His mind
eternally spotless off all humility
towards those who do what he does,
bleeding five days every month.
His heart clean
because he offered to
blow you first.
And “isn’t vaginal dryness a problem when you’re older?”
Talk about going through a rough patch.
His soul untouched
by the body count of illegal abortions. And that even under the best circumstances,
it can be a complicated thing to live with.
Safe abortion—Now that’s a rough patch that someone with an unwanted pregnancy would die for.
Oh wait, they are dying.
The male of our species coddled by a world made in His image.
Taught to occupy it as a cozy bubble.
And the spheres of that luxury, so smooth and shiny.
Because it has never encountered
the edges of fear,
the dents of consequence,
the pressures of anticipation.
We stare from the corner at your carelessness.
We envy it. We suffer it.
We die a little sooner, a little quicker, a little more painfully than we needed to.
All this because on that very first sunset, when Eve was fashioned from a broken rib,
He was nursing a broken heart.
Manhood—Your legal tender. In rainbow colours, once a year.
Your suffering is proving lethal.
Death and destruction swallowing the other half (we all know who we are).
We, who have power beaten out of us,
drawn out from our veins,
squeezed from our eyeballs.
Eventually, he becomes vulnerable to the force of his carelessness.
And we stare as he falls into the cushions of fragility.
Fragility: even his defensiveness is criticized with a luxuriant epithet.
Fragility: a quality previously reserved for Victorian beauties and porcelain dolls.
I don’t care what anyone says.
He is not ruthless.
His is alarmingly, seriously sick.
Nations burned to the ground,
because not even the highest offices can cure him of his mid-life crisis.
Health systems are not designed around his needs.
His suffering is at pandemic proportions.
And yet, the entire sum of all our knowledge
has not found a cure
for his pain.
06.12.2024/VDS
Vyoma 