They look for purple skin
for blood loud enough to count.
to something small enough
and leave no photograph behind?
is a crime scene with no chalk outline.
is a siren no one else hears.
We believed in the badge,
in the promise stitched into uniforms
that said protect and serve.
But when he raised his voice
and I raised my arms to shield my face,
when my child clung to my leg
like a lifeline in a storm—
As if pain must be spectacular
like inconvenient paperwork.
and “not enough evidence.”
of the terror that lives in your throat.
of the way your heart rehearses survival
every night before sleep.
in a country that advertises safety
We trusted that visible bruises
And here’s the cruelest twist—
when we finally stand tall enough
when survival hardens into instinct,
when fear turns into refusal—
we’re the ones who tremble.
will be renamed violence.
will be rewritten as guilt.
It feels like injustice wrapped in procedure.
Your fear does not make you wrong.
Your defense does not make you criminal.
Your anger is not madness;
Invisible abuse is still abuse.
Silenced harm is still harm.
is not your shame to carry.
And even when no one documented it,
even when they looked away—
