“I Watched, I Felt, I Bruised”
I watched someone get beaten in Lisbon.
A stranger—
but not strange to pain.
The street did not blink.
The air did not protest.
Only I stood still,
my breath thick
like blood in my throat.
And I have been beaten, too.
Not by strangers,
but by blood,
in a home with familiar walls
that didn’t echo my scream.
In Germany,
my brother’s fists
spoke a language
I never wanted to learn.
It was not anger—
it was silence turned to violence,
and no one stopped him.
Not then.
Not now.
I tried to forget.
Tried to walk past it,
leave it in foreign streets
and childhood rooms.
But it returned—
like a boomerang
I never meant to throw.
Wounds I didn't create
came back wearing my name.
I carry Lisbon in my eyes,
and my childhood in my ribs.
Some bruises fade.
Some memorize the shape
of every unanswered cry.
Don’t ask me to forget.
Don’t tell me it’s past.
It still breathes
between my bones.
But I write.
And when I write,
the broken things don’t win.