Behind Closed Doors: Part 2 Poem by Paula Glynn

Harry was born an angel and didn't deserve this
He didn't deserve his aggressive and abusive father
That would painfully punish with a fist
That would repeatedly belt with red welts.

Harry didn't want childhood abuse
His love and innocence being destroyed
His inner glow fatally diminished
His happiness and zest for life stolen.

Harry telling no one about his father's violence
Imagining his father being buried
When the fear and violence would end
But death doesn't change inner pain.

Harry living a long life in spite of the wounds
But also a hard life trusting no one
A life expecting betrayal and abuse
Believing happiness a myth of the foolish.

In the way his father was foolish
In the way his mother obeyed his father
His father hardened to the ways of the world
Cold, indifferent to suffering and just evil

But his father must've suffered
The way Harry suffered during his childhood
Perhaps even his father a dangerous fool
A man needing fear and obedience and control.

But Harry not destined to follow in his father's footsteps
Harry to walk one step after one step ahead
Harry to turn to the Christian church
Never becoming a religious hypocrite.

Harry now knows his father had been a sick man
His father felt no love and didn't understand
How to be affectionate and kind
His father a hard soul and a hard mind

Harry knows the devil to have a difficult time
With the nasty presence of his father
His father refusing to submit
But the devil is powerful beyond human strength.

And Harry knows all this sitting in the church peu
Praying for his father to quickly learn his lesson
And never again have a mind of cold stone
God healing all wounds and taking him to his heavenly home.