Because You Never Spoke…

Society builds a box for what abuse is meant to be,
A family member’s anger, or a man’s brutality.
They search the script for sexual harm, they miss the wider snare,
And leave the non-conforming truth out shivering in the air.

What if the monster isn't male, and fifty years of age?
A minder trusted by the town, who locks you in her cage.
Five days a week from eighteen months, they hand you to her smile,
Then walk away, blinded to the venom and the bile. 

The front door shuts, the halo drops, the cruelty begins,
A wooden brush slammed on your head for imaginary sins. 
A metal hair grip driven deep and lodged inside your bone,
Found only when your mother bathes you in the kitchen sink alone.
She pricks her finger on the tip that juts out from your skull,
And asks no questions, leaves it be, her own attention dull.

A head shoved down the toilet bowl to drown the muffled cries,
Till nosebleeds stain the porcelain beneath her watching eyes.
Whole days spent standing motionless, against the glass back door,
Counting the square-paned geometry like a thousand times before. 
When sickness strikes, you’re forced to stand the bathroom tiles all day,
No matter that you say you're well, she always makes you pay. 
When younger ones break down, and start to tremble and to fret,
You rush to hush the rising spark before she flies in rage and threat.
To shield them from the sudden blow, though helpless to defend,
The fragile skin of your own life that shattered in the end.

At home, the walls are shaking from a drunkard's violent rage,
While mother is a vacant ghost upon a different stage.
You grow up thinking every adult acts this cruel and true,
You don't go telling anyone the open sky is blue.
Because you think they live it too, because it’s all you’ve known,
A quiet, suffocating life where horrors are all you’re shown. 

And later, when the dam breaks down and all the truth is bare,
Your mother turns and asks you softly: Why did you never share?
As if a baby knew the words, as if a child had choice,
As if survival left a space to fabricate a voice.
The final, heaviest prison cell is taking all the blame,
To brand your own bewildered heart with unremitting shame—
Because you stayed, because you lived, because you never spoke,
And carry now the crushing weight of everything that broke.

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