The following poem was written by Mike Hall about his heartbreaking experience as a 10 year old with his coach-father. It coincides with the previous blog which details Mike’s interactions with his father so many years ago.
Your voice was like thunder
that rocked my room and my world.
It shook my soul and crushed my spirit.
Where it came from doesn’t matter.
You were wrong…
the first time
and the last.
There are no excuses
and I am not to blame.
I will not accept that it was
just your way of letting off steam.
Dad, you were a volcano
erupting near my heart.
It wasn’t smoke and ash
that I feared,
it was the suffocating thought
that tortured my brain…
the thought that there was nothing,
nothing in the world
that I could do,
to make you love the broken child
that was too scared to speak
and too hurt to cry.