“You hit like a girl.”

I wanted to tell her that
when she came up to the register
with her arm in a cast
because she broke some of her fingers
punching a bouncer at a city bar.

I want to watch the indignation
rise on her face like a rose
as she goes on the defensive
from my perceived insult.

I want to listen to her
read me the riot act
about a bullshit
and sexist comment.

I want to see that look on her face
as I take off my apron,
step around the counter,
and tell her to throw a punch at me.

I want to knock her on her ass
when she throws a full-body punch at me,
and I control her fall
to keep her injured arm safe.

I want to pick her back up
and teach her how to throw a punch.

I want to show her
how to make a fist,
explain why you never
NEVER
put your thumb inside of your fist,
explain that I was taught
to put my thumb on top of my fist,
instead of beside it,
because it makes all the muscles and tendons of your arm
line up like a hammer.

I want to explain to her
how to stand,
how to strike
like a bathroom towel,
like a bolt of lightning.

I want to explain
how you’re supposed to hit
with the first two knuckles of your fist,
how it’s easier to use a makiwara,
a tool used to train calluses,
to harden two knuckles
than it is to harden
the entire face of your fist.

I want to see
the look on her face
when I explain that this
is how you train yourself
to break someone’s bones,
without breaking your own.

And I want to tell her
how I don’t want her to listen
to any of this.

I want to tell her
how I think she punches
like a breaking wave,
how I think it’s beautiful
that she throws everything she is,
her whole heart,
into a full-body punch.
But I tell her anyway
so she’s able to protect herself
while protecting herself.

I said none of this,
of course.

Because I do not know her very well,
and my employers
would not look kindly
on me teaching someone
how to break bones
next to one of their cash registers.

And I wonder if she even needed my help,
if she was already strong enough,
hard enough,
to protect herself already.

And I wonder if she’d appreciate my help,
despite that hardness,
because it means someone cares,
and is trying to take care of her.

So I said none of this.
I just spoke politely,
wished her a good day,
and watched her walk away,
my heart breaking with each
and every
step.

I had a dream once, and in that dream I loved someone who was sick, who was dying.

She saw how difficult it was for me to tend her, and so, she told me to leave.
She told me it was OK to go.

These are the words I had for the woman in my dream.

“I want to run away,
like all those hard times in my past,
when I left a relationship
not because I stopped loving them
but because staying to love them
hurt too much.
But I don’t want to be that man for you.

I wanna be your ‘fuck you’ man.

Because I’m scared,
I’m so fucking scared.
And I want to run away again.
I want to run away
and hide
until the problem is gone,
but I won’t.
Because I don’t want to be that man anymore.
Because I want to stare down
that man and those feelings
and say,
‘Fuck you.’

I don’t want to be the man
who makes a terrible time of your life
even worse.
I want to be the best part
of the worst part of your life.
I want to stay by your side,
brave in spite of my fear,
strong in spite of both our weaknesses,
giving at a time in your life
when you need everything I can give you
and maybe then some.

I want to be one of two kinds of man:

I want to be the man
you can turn to
once all this is over,
years down the road,
the one with whom
you look back on it all and say,
‘Thank God you were there.
I don’t know how I would have made it through without you.’

Or if I can’t be that,
if God or fate,
disease or this shitty world
makes that impossible,
then I want to be the man
you look up to
from your deathbed and say,
‘Thank God you were there.
I don’t know how I would have made it through without you.’

So fuck you,
I’m not leaving.”

Loving someone can be hard.
Loving someone can be terrifying.
But love can be brazen and audacious.
Love can be as profane as it is profound.
And love…can be fucking stubborn.

The electric telegraph was invented in 1837.
by two teams, independently.

One was Cooke and Wheatstone,
whose model was accepted by the UK.
The other was Samuel Morse and associates,
whose model became the standard for Europe and the United States.
In 1844, Morse sent his iconic message, “WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT”.
The last telegram was sent in July of 1999,
and a signoff followed the message.
And 155 years later,
the words echoed:
“What hath God wrought?”

God hath wrought war:
The American Civil War,
The Boxer Rebellion,
The Russian Revolution,
The Mexican Revolution,
The Great War,
World War II,
The Korean War,
Vietnam,
and the Iraq War
to name a few.
But not all.
No, not all.

God hath wrought equality:
The 13th Amendment to the US Constitution,
The 15th Amendment,
Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka Kansas,
and The 24th Amendment.
Feminism:
The First Wave,
Women’s Suffrage,
and The 19th Amendment.
The Second Wave,
Equal pay,
Roe vs Wade –
the fight continues.
The Third Wave,
fighting The Man,
discarding old labels,
redefining yourself,
redefining the world
and what’s to come.

God hath wrought shame:
an indivisible nation divided,
the shadow of Jim Crow,
and Segregation.
Prohibition,
The 18th Amendment,
the rise of The Mob,
and the 21st Amendment.
Watergate,
Iran-Contra,
W.M.D.s,
or maybe there weren’t any,
and Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.

God hath wrought nobility:
Harriet Tubman,
Susan B. Anthony,
Mother Teresa,
Rosa Parks,
Mahatma Gandhi,
Martin Luther King Junior,
The Tank Man of Tiananmen Square,
Nelson Mandela,
and many, many more…

What hath God wrought?
A brave new world that has such people in it.