Do Men Suffer At All?

By Juhi Gautam

He stood on the balcony

with silence and fear

that someone would spot him

and silence his tears,

Tears, which would proclaim him weak

Coz boys don't cry is what he weeps

about day and night thinking crying would make him less of a boy. Black Pink or Pink Floyd he can’t make no choice.

Boys will be boys is what he keeps hearing

and questions if it is his fault that he is born a boy,

In a world where every man is looked down upon,

because man! A few dogs down the street treat women like pawn.

Boys don't know what girls go through

is what he gets to hear in school

a day after his uncle invaded his territory,

Clawing out his dignity from his pool

of emotions.

For donkey’s years he kept mum,

as he was afraid of being made an object of fun.

Because boys are meant to fight back,

he’s an exception, can’t society cut him some slack?

While shaving his non-existent beard

in a hope that it grows faster,

He wants the world to judge his heart

and not his lateness in taking a girl’s ‘flower’.

While pulling out a chair for a girl at a restaurant, he wonders whether he can ‘Pull-for’ himself when he sees his own life shattering in front of his eyes. But at that very moment, fixing a broken facade is more important than fixing the broken pieces of his life.

It is not only girls, boys suffer too.

Black Pink or Pink Floyd?

Black Pink he’ll now choose.

So that when we talk of abuse,

Even men can stand up and say

#MeToo.

By Juhi Gautam