Why is it that in the same thunder that accuse you recuse your statement simultaneously? Granting her freedom in the same breath that you once incarcerated her very actions. The idea that in the midst of the storm we both sought the same shelter and refuge that had no roof for herself. We both bleed for the same woman who cuts us and then asks us why we are bleeding. We are marked by the same scar in different bodies. Your kindness is a lasting testament of love that you continue to bear and love. But I wonder, what does it feel like to be born from the womb of the woman who constantly grieves you? The one who results in you putting down your own son as if he was a stranger who had not endured the same things that he felt you feeling and saw unfolding into what we see now. What do I say? What do I do.
I say: I am tired of being the alibi for her weather.
I do: I learn the language of a door that closes without slamming.
Because every time I defend her, I become her echo
and my throat becomes the courtroom where my own innocence is sentenced.
You hear it too, do you not?
How the storm speaks in contradictions,
how it calls you cruel for leaving
and calls you weak for staying,
how it baptizes your mouth with apologies
and then drowns you when you finally swallow air.
She is not only the woman,
she is the entire architecture of need.
A house that teaches you love is a leash,
a roof that disappears whenever she needs rain to be holy.
We kept returning with our hands out,
not for blessings, not for forgiveness,
but for proof that tenderness could exist without punishment.
She gave it to us in fragments,
as if affection was a currency she could counterfeit
and still demand we call it gold.
You and I, we became fluent in the smallest mercies.
A calm morning.
A laugh that did not bite.
A plate set down without the sound of indictment.
We called these things peace
because we did not have the vocabulary for safety.
And that son, that boy,
your own flesh made visible,
your own childhood standing upright in the room
like a mirror you did not consent to.
How could she not grieve him, when he carried your face,
and your face carried every loss she refused to name?
So she put him down
the way a wounded animal bites the hand reaching to lift it.
Not because he was a stranger,
but because he was too familiar.
Because he arrived holding the evidence.
Tell me, what does it do to a person
to be born from the womb of a woman who mourns you while you breathe?
To be held and resented in the same embrace,
to be kissed like a promise
and then blamed like a prophecy?
It makes you careful with joy.
It makes you mistrust silence,
because silence was never empty in that house,
it was only the pause before the next confession was demanded.
It makes you become the parent of your own parent,
measuring your words like medicine,
folding your anger into neat squares
so it looks like obedience.
And still, you love her.
Because loving her is the first religion you were taught,
and every religion punishes apostasy.
I have watched you carry her sorrow
as if it were your birthright,
as if her grief was a crown you were honoured to bleed beneath.
Your kindness is a lasting testament of love that you continue to bear and love,
and I cannot tell whether to admire it
or to beg you to lay it down before it becomes your grave.
Because love is not supposed to feel like surveillance.
Love is not supposed to turn your pulse into a witness stand.
Love is not supposed to make you apologise
for the bruises you did not throw.
We both sought shelter in the same storm.
We both found a refuge that had no roof for herself,
and we called it family
because the word sounded warmer than the truth.
We are marked by the same scar in different bodies.
Yours is the one you hide with duty.
Mine is the one I hide with distance.
Her scar is the one she keeps reopening
so she can prove she is still alive.
So what do you say?
You say the truth, even if it trembles.
You say: I am not your enemy.
You say: I will not be your sacrifice.
You say: I can love you without letting you unmake me.
What do you do?
You do not bargain with thunder.
You do not call lightning a lesson.
You do not confuse endurance for devotion.
You build a shelter that does not require anyone to be ruined
for anyone else to feel safe.
And when she asks why you are bleeding,
you do not answer with excuses.
You show her your hands.
You show her the red.
You let the silence be the sentence.
Because some storms do not want to be survived.
They want to be obeyed.
And I am done being weathered into someone else's peace.
I am done.
But if you are not done,
if you still choose to stand in that doorway
with kindness in your arms like a child you refuse to abandon,
then I will not call you weak.
I will only ask you, softly, again and again,
to stop putting down your own son inside yourself
to keep her from grieving out loud.
To stop mistaking the womb for a home.
To remember:
a woman can be wounded
and still be wrong.
A mother can be holy
and still be harmful.
And love, if it is love,
must leave room for your life
to be more than the proof of her pain.
