The bully's cage
How do you approach a bully?
Get under their skin.
Make them feel the discomfort.
They try to distribute on others.
They have fought to possess what they have.
They don't trust themselves to wander far from their own cage.
The bars bent into place through their own rage.
The space barely big enough to hold themselves in.
How do you teach a bully to rethink it all.
To pull them back out of their will toward abuse.
And how much of the abuse is for the other?
And how much are they retaining for themselves?
Remember the contorted face of your bully.
Such a tough front for the world.
How do we ourselves conciliate?
When we find them crying alone in the school bathroom.
Their shame compounding and reviving their sense of deep rage.
They wipe the tears that I witness, stand and push me away.
I offer the hug once more but the bully has made too much space for pain.
Love is a tyrant.
