We inherit armour, rust-locked at the joints, with each
father’s silence soldered to the next, a legacy of clenched
jaws grinding grief to powder. Let’s face it, the old scripts burn
but we still speak in smoke, in haze. Brother, we utter nice words, meaning
stranger I cannot touch. The world demands our hardness as edge while our sons learn to flinch at our approaching footsteps,
and we stand accused of terrible crimes we committed, crimes we didn’t, crimes our grandfathers blessed as virtue. This body, somehow trained for assault and damage,
forgets the tenderness it craves, forgets the child at home
who once wept freely in his mother’s arms, but wishes for return.

Between the gun and the open hand, we now loiter,
neither striking nor caressing, suspended in the terrible
now of not-knowing what to be, sitting with the anguish of unlearning. The old kings are deceased but their golden tattered thrones still emit the stench of powder.

How to unmake a fist? How to father without conquering?
Can we practice saying, I feel, I’m vulnerable—those awkward words catching us like sharp fishhooks in our throats. The future
asks us to imagine: can we be men who garden revolutions,
who midwife each other’s healing, who dare
to fail at dominance? But first, now, this angst.
First, now, this time of reckoning. First, this bone-breaking
that must be reset to heal. A re-birthing. A call. A different legacy.
Are we brave enough to try?

19/7/2025