That Anger, That Pain
On the refrain underneath the noise — how much of what we call anger is really just a child asking where they went.
Some emotions don’t have a clean translation. That anger, that pain is what they become when the actual feeling can’t find its name. This poem traces what’s underneath.
It dawned on me
Many moons ago
That anger, that pain…
Is nothing more than saying
Where did my child go?
Why do hearts yearn
For those who cause
That anger, that pain…
Why do we bathe in water
That doesn’t make us clean?
We’re so desperate to be seen
To be heard
From that anger, that pain…
To show that one individual
We’re doing fine from a visual
That does not represent
Our lives; that anger, that pain…
Most adult anger, if you sit with it long enough, sounds a lot like a child asking where the rest of itself went. The visual we show the world rarely represents the lives we’re actually living. The refrain underneath is the giveaway.
— JTC