The Incredible Hulk
paid an unwelcome visit
to our home last week.
He sat in the living room,
a huge, silent, seething
mountain of rage.

Nobody really dared
to talk to him
and the entire family spent the evening
walking on egg shells.

I can’t account for it.
I don’t know why an annoyance
made me snap,
transforming me
from an easy-going, cheerful Mammy
into a sullen, seething,
monster of a Mammy.

I don’t know why
my heart felt so heavy,
why the world suddenly became
such a dark, hopeless place.

For those few hours
I felt helpless,
trapped by my anger,
unable to shake it off.

By the next morning
my anger had passed.
I felt such a hypocrite,
spending time in prayer
and then inflicting this Incredible Hulk
on my family.
I felt ashamed
of what I had put my husband through
and even more ashamed
of the example I had set
for my children.

I apologised to my family
for putting them through
this ordeal.

Lord,
help me to deal with
the annoyances and irritations of life.
Help me to discuss them
instead of going silent
and bottling them up.
I never again want to inflict
this Incredible Hulk
on my family.

Life’s too short for that.

© Claire Murray, 16th September 2017