Sometimes you wonder
If when someone is angry
If what they say is said
Because of anger
Or because of a reputation.
Or just because they think they have no one.
What if they are sitting outside of school fuming.
What do you do then?
You want to be nice
And go to ask, "What's wrong?"
But you're scared
Because anger in your mind means violence
And you are physically and emotionally scarred
Battered
Bruised
Broken
But you still want to help this other human being
Because you don't want anyone else to go through the pain that you did.
And as you go to sit beside them
They mutter, "Go away."
But you don't.
You sit and you listen to them cry
And scream
And fume
Until they look towards you and say, "I'm sorry."
And they keep repeating these two words over and over again
And you reach over to comfort them
And they lean into your hug and cry on your shoulder
But you just let it happen
Because you can tell
This person has been deprived
Of care
Of love
Of hope
And they need someone's shoulder to cry on
And they need someone to hug them
And they need someone to stay with them and watch over them
And they need someone to truthfully say that it's alright
Because without this security
They are a ball of string
Everyone is a ball of string
Slowly unraveling until it either hits its core
Or breaks in to process.
You broke just before your ball of string hit your core
And you found new hope
New purpose
New love
But because you broke so close to the core
It took a long time to build trust
To build love
To build confidence
And you have
And you can see that this person sitting on the steps beside you
Is unraveling so quickly
That they accept what everyone says about them
Positive or negative
And they don't know how to talk to someone
So they suffer in silence
And they have lost their voice in the public world
And their opinion doesn't matter to most anymore.
So as they cry on your shoulder, you gather the string
And you start to slowly wind it back up
And as they stand
They cower close to you
Afraid of the world
And you know that it is you who must guide them
Hold them
Support them
And gather up their ball of string.
