No.

We don't know how to tell you this.

Us women who have come down from the high you gave.

Us little girls who became women overnight because you took from us the safety of childish ways.

Because you made us unsafe, because we had to become brave.

Because you made us feel hate.

Lonely.

A raging bitterness that took the twinkle from our eyes and replaced it with a different kind of emotion.

One that caused us to rain down upon the skin of our cheeks.

You broke our hearts.

You plucked them from our chest and laid them to feast,

And when we could not eat, You scorned us.

It's not a suicide if there's two involved,

It's a murder with extra steps.

You murdered so many of us who couldn't make it out.

We don't know how to tell you that we will never forgive you.

That the women of our ancestors are currently burning your memories like a brand into our souls so that we may never forget how it feels.

So that we won't fall for the same foolish things as they did,

Like trust,

Like defencelessness.

We now stay forever on guard.

Terrified that you could come back in more form than one.

That the kind smile of the man on the street,

could turn into a baring of teeth in a matter of weeks.

That every wolf is in fact dressed as a sheep.

We remember how your grandfather called himself big and bad.

How he cut up our grannies when he said he was mad.

And then wore their silence like a second skin.

Created a home in their bones to hide his insecurities within.

And then took our mothers under his venomous wing,

And taught her that loving is a thing born of suffering,

And if he doesn't hurt you, he doesn't love you,

And if he doesn't bruise you he doesn't want to touch you,

And if he doesn't pull you down so that he can rise above,

Then how in the hell could you call it love?

And we believed him.

We believed him, because we didn't know how to tell him.

NO.