The world is full of dangerous men
They are brutal and calloused, and cold
The world is full of dangerous men, they said
Cover up, don’t go out too late
Head on a swivel, don’t retaliate
Don’t reject them too hard
Don’t love them too soft
The world is full of dangerous men, they said
I was fourteen when he broke my head
He said that I was special; he thought I was cool
He said that I was too smart for my high school
He was twenty seven
Living in his mother’s attic and selling weed to children
Now, I am twenty seven
It is only through this lens that I understand
The world is full of dangerous men
I left home at sixteen and ran all the way to the ocean
A man, almost thirty, rented his spare bedroom to me
There is a lot I won’t say about the July of 2015
But I do remember the carpet burns
I remember the past unwinding
I remember the Sherriff office and the voicemail that he left me
I remember the HIV antibiotics, just in case
I remember the flash of the nurse’s camera as she documented me
All the wounds and ligatures and choke marks
I remember showering in the dark
The world is full of dangerous men
I remember my father telling me
“It was your fault that you left”
“What did you expect”
“The world, it’s full…of dangerous men”
Justine Castereno is the same age as me
A Navy sailor, honorably discharged for the things that happened to her at sea
Vanessa Guillen, an Army soldier who dreamed of the good,
Before she was bludgeoned to death in the dank corners of Ft. Hood
The world is full…of dangerous men
Molly Miller, Tessa Curley, Mona Lisa Two Eagle
Stolen from the purgatory of the reservation lands, still missing
The world is full…of dangerous men
To be a woman
Is to be subjected to naked violence
Kristen Stewart braved a camera in her face to say
“Having a female body is an overtly political act”
We laughed her away because, why would you say that?
It’s so cringy
It’s so dull
Until you are the woman standing in the examination room
Dialing your phone
Praying for the state to help you recover
Praying for intercession, for someone to say
That you don’t have to birth the baby born from rape
“Blood visible from space in Sudan shows evidence of Darfur genocide”
ABC News reports like it is just another day
It is just another day
The blood of children and women, the weight of shame
How many have died?
We really can’t say
150,000, maybe more
Those numbers are ten months old
No journalist has hit the ground since then
It’s hard to say, but what we know,
Is the world is full of dangerous men
There is a knock on my door, it’s Halloween
A little boy stands in front of me
Dressed up as a T-Rex, the brutal relic of killing
Asking for a Snickers bar
Sticky palms outstretched
He is so soft in the moment, I wonder
How long until he becomes someone
That no one will recognize
Someone that no one questions
How long before his spine bends under his first act of violence
The world is full of soft boys who grew into brutal men
Shannan Watts was smothered
The bodies of her children stuffed into oil tankers
Her husband, their father, found someone new
He hated her for what she grew in her womb
He is still living in Waupun, Wisconsin
In a max security prison, the only one who survived
The bodies of his daughters still floating
In crude oil with their brother who never got to begin
The world is full of dangerous men
When I was 20, I called my grandmother crying
I told her my life was falling apart
I had no husband, no family, no plan
She surprised me by saying, “Thank God”
Thank the God that saw her through fifty years of the Presbyterian Church
The God who birthed her four children
The God who stayed on her bedside each night
The God who showed up in the gray space of the meantime
My grandfather outlived her
He is 89 years old, softly decaying
On a waterbed history of drunkenness and cheating
Did he ever love her? Did he know what love means?
And I fight to love him in the confines of his legacy
The family he built, and ripped apart again
The world is full of dangerous men
And the women are left with the stories
My father and I sat at the barstools of Twin Peaks
Half-naked waitresses brought us our drinks
I told him that I knew about the prostitutes
I knew about him cheating
Through eyes, glassy and bloodshot, he whispered
“You don’t know what it’s like to be me”
His second wife, so sick that she couldn’t bend to his conformity
He traded away $3000 a month just to feel something
The women were my age and fighting for security
Fighting for the pay stubs to begin again
The world is full of dangerous men
They are the men that I love
They are the men of my family
The world is full of dangerous men
And every single one of them has fallen to sin
Gianna May Ruland
Gianna Ruland is a Colorado native who currently resides in Nebraska. She is a student at the University of Nebraska where she is earning her Bachelor's of Social Work degree (BSW). She currently works at a retirement home as a Social Services Coordinator in her town. Her lived experience as a survivor of physical abuse and sexual assault inspires her to help others in her community. Her passions include helping other victims of child abuse and sexual assault find healing through community resources.