He saw the world in color, but his course
was black & white cartoonish absolutes.
His superheroes had explosive force
and all his villains acted thorough brutes.
A man’s a man, and alpha is preferred;
a woman misbehaving is a bitch.
And so it stood until the worst occurred,
and he was stricken from he knew not which.

Then gray were the impressions he received,
and murky were the boundaries he sensed.
His weakness waxed, and though his loved ones grieved,
the women in his life, with will condensed,
stepped up to lead, to flex, exerting vim,
confounding all those certainties in him.