Manhood

Men don’t cry. We slip from the comfort of our own beds, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out, and it all still hurts; from the moment we rise, until the skies shift to darkness; where we can sit on the edge of our beds, and breathe in, and breathe out. We were always told to hide it all, underneath clenched jaws and trembling little fists. To go through schoolyards and dinner tables; with darkened eyes and plastic hearts forced to be made of stone. A generation of little boys in suits and ties, grieving something we never had, at the edge of a burial ground; of a childhood spent in buried aches. All those “look me in the eyes when I talk,” all those “boys don’t cry”, all those words that all men oddly share like the ones before them; turned into unwanted rituals for a silent yet violent manhood, an open door to a madhouse made of tempered glass, where we all sit together yet sit alone, with clenched jaws and wrinkly, calloused fists, wishing for something we lived yet never felt, a childhood or a hug; things we never had, yet always miss.