A Suffering

I was once removed from the comfort of my masculinity by the vision of a woman stood by the side of the road in Aquin, a town named after he for whom Truth came solely from the Divine. Her face was indistinguishable from the river of red and mucus pouring from her beaten swollen face, her white t- shirt drenched to blood thickening blackness. I could not hear her screams as the car passed, all sound now muted - Our progress slowed as though time had stalled, as though we had been transformed into atomic particles wafting in inconsequential space - floating by her anguish like drifting plankton. A policeman - in the shade of the palms – sat in slouched indifference to her wailing. Her arms flayed and cut the air like craven machetes without a crop to harvest; Her rage a primal pleading for a justice she could never see in a world of men, built by men, built for men, - the sometimes noble and sometimes savage sex to which I belong.