The Hand That Hurts

At the other end

Of a chastising hand

Sting on the face

Broken nose

Spinning head

Blood-flow unchecked

Child’s body falling over

Love is uncertain

Tender arms enfolding

A hold that grows

Too tight

Creeping hand groping

The child’s privacy

Mocking

And all the mothers

Drinking tea in the warm kitchen

Bend over laughing

Almost choking

On their biscuits

Red faces paler

Than that of the child

Mortified

It isn’t true to say

The hand that hurts

Is the hand that heals

The hand is impotent

And cannot undo the done

And there is no wound

To speak of or look at

It too has its privacy

Finding its own destructive

Consolations committed

To its own annihilation