Who listens to the cries of the fathers
who bury their wives and go home
to children still calling out, “Dad?”
Who holds the man who must be strong at the funeral,
strong in the living room, strong at the dinner table,
when all he wants is to fall apart without frightening the little eyes
watching him?
Who listens to the boy sunk in unemployment,
degree folded in a drawer, phone silent,
friends moving ahead while he stands still
counting coins and shame?
They tell him, “Be a man.”
As if manhood is a job offer. As if strength pays rent.
Who listens to the stories men swallow?
Because a river without an outlet
does not stay fresh. It turns salty.
And a man without someone safe does not stay soft.
He hardens. Sometimes into silence.
Sometimes into anger. Sometimes into someone
even he does not recognize.
We ask men to provide. Provide money.
Provide answers. Provide protection.
Provide a shoulder. Provide solutions.
But who provides for the provider?
After circumcision, the songs end.
The celebration fades. And suddenly, he is alone with expectation.
No one asks about his fear, No one explains his tears.
He is told, “From today, you are a man.”
But no one shows him where to take his confusion.
Where to place his heartbreak, where to empty the pressure
of becoming before he understands what he is becoming.
So he learns to hide. He hides the bullying.
He hides the abuse. Yes, men are abused too.
He hides the failure, He hides the nights
He stares at the ceiling, wondering if he is enough.
And when men die by their own hands, we whisper,
“How did we not see it?” But did we ever ask?
When prisons are full of men, when streets are loud with rage,
When homes shake from unhealed wounds, we blame the man
without asking who held him when he was a boy.
It is okay for a man to cry when he is overwhelmed.
It is okay for a man to say, “I am tired.”
It is okay not to be okay.
But it is not okay to bleed on others
because you never learned how to dress your own wounds.
We need spaces.
Rooms where men can sit, without pretending.
Without performing, without being measured
by how much they earn or how little they feel.
We need affordable therapy, Conversations in churches.
In schools, In community halls.
On the radio, At dinner tables.
We need uncles who speak gently.
Leaders who admit they have struggled too.
Brothers who check in, without laughing it off.
We need to teach the boychild that strength is not silence.
That courage is not violence, that tears do not cancel manhood.
Because a generation that cannot speak will eventually explode.
And we cannot afford, to keep losing our men, to pride,
to pressure, to pain they were told to carry alone.
Who listens to the fathers?
Who listens to the sons? Let it be us. Before the river turns salty.
Before the silence becomes rage. Before it is too late.
Let men be human. Let them feel.
Let them speak. Let them heal.
Because saving the boychild
is not a trend, It is survival.
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I strongly fell in love in the wrong arms by walkingshadow
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