That statement always makes me laugh not because it is funny but because of how quickly it appears when harm is named.  Men are united in that way. Don’t misunderstand me ; this is not  hatred . It is bewilderment. It is the strange urgency to defend a category when a woman is trying to survive a story.

In baba fuje’s large  compound with cracked walls and  stubborn wooden doors, nothing went  unheard, neighbors heard everything and yet somehow nothing  was ever said.

“It is not all men” Aunty Sidi would murmur, fanning herself with an old  Newspaper. Her wrapper tied low against the afternoon heat. And she was not wrong . Some husbands carried tears, joy and peace in the same hands. Some men spoke  softly. some men prayed and some men gave love like rain after a famine.
 

But when night drew near with a sound like a drum struck by lightning. It was a man’s voice that thundered.©️By_Ann.

When Bose’s  round earrings and bangles stopped singing, when her eyes and lips learned the bitter language of bruises and her nose inhaled  the shape  scent  of his wooden palette, when her skin color wore  two different shades. It was a man’s shadow that stretching across the room.

By morning, she would cover pink, blue, red and purple with the brown powder,  the color of surrender and silence. The sun would rise like nothing happened , the compound would sweep its leaves, children would play and laugh, Goats would bleats , insects would dance and birds would sing .

And the world , so good at pretending , would continue .

True love should taste like palm wine fresh and sweet, shared and warming . It should not arrive as a fist . It should not disguise as an authority. It should not leave scars when mere tenderness ought to be .
 

It is not all men,

But when fear sleeps beside a woman and wakes before she does,

It is almost always a man who put it there.