Overspill

This week I began an online poetry course with the great title of poetry for inspiration and wellbeing. It's a great start! For our first writing prompt we were invited to reflect on 'that time you hurt me more than you will ever know'. Here is the poem that came from that prompt, recognising that in protecting ourselves we can hurt others, and often vulnerable young others who don't understand!

Overspill

Was it a deliberate act
of pushing away?
Or a habitual response
to someone getting too close?
Did you mean to cause
so much pain
so much upset?

A child doesn’t understand
the pain of adulthood
how your emotions spill out
to wound another.

Now
from a distance of decades
I can rationally reflect
that you couldn’t control
the overspill.

Your way of coping
was retreat
to refrain from getting hurt.

Yet I have my own
overspill
to contend with.
Even now
with the distance of decades
my overspill is tears
that will not be contained.

Was it a deliberate act
of pushing away?

© 8 Oct 18