Violence has a familiar face

Dark and dim

Cold and close

Sometimes almost innocent

But rotten deep down

Unleashed without a trigger

Repeated without a care

Sometimes, alas, even with a smile

Before the beatings

After the curses

In a society that celebrates love

Where is there help?

Violence has a familiar face

Difficult to look at, impossible to ignore

It comes close, it comes fast

It hits often, it hits hard

It makes bruises, and makes them really dark

It uses tools, and makes deep and irreversible cuts

It pauses, but never forgets to continue the attack.

How come it is so good at this, dare I ask?

Knocking women and girls down whenever possible is no easy task

Was there a course at the uni

That they teach in secrecy and in the dark?

Violence has a familiar face

Dark and dim

Cold and close

Without care or concern

It hits us hard

It hurts us deep

It eats our hearts out

It freezes our blood

Violence has a familiar face

We know it all too well

The cuts are one too many

Unlike the cures

Hurt and harm are everywhere

Yet where is the help?

How to break the patriarchy?

How to reinvent the hierarchy?

How to rebuild our solidarity

For the sake of our shared humanity?

Zhaohui Su (suzhaohuiszh@yeah.net), Professor, School of Public Health; Key Laboratory of Environmental Medicine Engineering, Ministry of Education, School of Public Health, Southeast University, Nanjing, 210009, CHINA.

Conflict of Interest: None                                                                                                                                                                                                          Funding: None

To cite: Su Z. Violence has a familiar face. Indian J Med Ethics. Published online first on May 26, 2025. DOI:10.20529/IJME.2025.043

Submission received: February 1, 2025

Submission accepted: April 17, 2025

Manuscript Editor: Rakhi Ghoshal

Copyright and license

©Indian Journal of Medical Ethics 2025: Open Access and Distributed under the Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits only noncommercial and non-modified sharing in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.