Shades of emasculation

Complying with betrayals

He said, ‘it never happened’ when confronted with

the betrayal

                   just as she secretly schemed the end

of piano lessons and then

               blithely suggested I tell her how proud of her

I was

and demanded I never confront the conspiracy

               and lamely, and calmly I complied

for decades….

               Only now is the blood of the

emasculation starting to drip

                                              in my nightmares

scenes of impotence born of role modelling

by forefathers…..

                              one hung from a belt in the shed

another threatened with a .22 at his head

at three a.m.

apparently their spines and larynxes

                            betrayed them

and all the generations that followed while

           their partners stripped their dignity

and their masculinity into dust

                   left in notes in diaries and memories

and empty beds and long lonely walks

       on Yonge Street after rejection following

the all-night train-ride to spend the

only ‘day off’ with his fiancé….and then

             hear a kindly invitation to stroll from her classmate

whose name he could not recall

            when recounting the details decades

later to his children….

coupling, it seems, for some is more corrosive

            than celebacy

especially for those whose spine and larynx

            and will

either atrophied or failed to develop.