Poetry
Some wounds do not bleed on the skin. They settle in the way a man raises his voice, the way his hands curl into fists before he even knows why. This poem was written from that quiet, heavy place, the place where a son looks at the father who once struck him “for his own good” and finally sees the same fire living inside his own chest. “The Violent You Is Me” is not an accusation. It is a confession. It is the moment the cycle becomes visible, and the only way forward is to ask for mercy, from the father, from the self, and from the child who still lives inside both of them.
In 2026 we talk more openly about intergenerational trauma, about the difference between discipline and damage, about the courage it takes to break a pattern instead of repeating it. This poem sits inside that conversation. It does not excuse the violence. It simply refuses to let the story end in hatred alone.
The Violent You Is Me
The door would slam and silence fill the air
Your voice a storm that left no room to spare
A raised right hand, the lesson of the day
I learned that love could strike and walk away
You called it discipline, a father’s care
To shape the soft into the hard and fair
But in the dark I counted every mark
And buried trust beneath a growing dark
I swore the day I left that house for good
No child of mine would taste that kind of wood
No belt, no shout, no sudden flash of red
I would be different. That is what I said
Yet years went by and still the echo stayed
A shadow walking with me unafraid
I felt it rise when pressure closed the door
The same tight jaw, the same inherited war
I saw you in the mirror when I raged
The violent you had found a second stage
My hands remembered what they never learned
To hold instead of bruise, to soothe the burn
I hated you for every silent tear
For teaching fear instead of how to hear
But standing here I finally understand
You were a boy who never found a hand
A softer hand to show another way
You only knew the language of that day
The fist was not pure malice, just a scar
Passed down from fathers who had gone too far
So here I am, the son who carries both
The wound you gave, the chance to break the oath
I ask forgiveness not for what you did
But for the years I let the hatred bid
Forgive the child who could not understand
The broken man who raised a heavier hand
And if the violent you still lives in me
Let mercy be the end of this decree
The poem moves in eight deliberate steps. The first two stanzas live inside the childhood house, the slamming door, the raised hand, the careful counting of marks in the dark. The language is plain because the memory is plain. There is no romanticizing of pain. The third and fourth stanzas carry the oath the son made when he left: I will be different. Yet the body remembers what the mind tries to forget. The anger rises on its own. The jaw tightens the same way. The fifth stanza is the mirror moment, the recognition that the violent you has taken up residence inside the speaker. This is the emotional center of the piece.
Stanzas six and seven turn the gaze backward with new eyes. The father is no longer only the source of the wound; he is also a former child who never received a softer language. The violence becomes inherited rather than invented. This does not erase responsibility. It simply places the story inside a longer chain. The final stanza is the asking. Notice the precise wording: the speaker does not ask the father to be forgiven for the beatings. He asks forgiveness for the years he fed the hatred, and he asks for mercy over the part of himself that still carries the same fire. The last two lines are both prayer and decision: if the violent you still lives in me, let mercy be the end of this decree.
Line-by-Line Meaning & Analysis
Why It Matters in 2026
We live in a time when conversations about parenting, masculinity, and mental health have finally moved from the margins into ordinary living rooms and classrooms. Yet many adult children still carry the quiet belief that “he only hit me because he loved me” or its opposite: “I will never forgive him.” Both positions can freeze a person in place. This poem refuses both freezes. It insists that seeing the father’s own brokenness does not require denying the harm, and that asking for mercy does not require pretending the marks never existed.
In 2026 the language of “breaking the cycle” is everywhere, but the actual emotional work remains rare and lonely. Poems like this one give students and teachers a precise object to study: the moment recognition becomes possible, the moment hatred is no longer the only available response, the moment a man decides that the violent inheritance stops with him even if the memory never fully leaves. That decision is not soft. It is one of the hardest forms of strength.
