The Punching Bag

I once peeped into a teenage boy's room.
Age does matters. He was fourteen.
I, a cool thirty-five.
Where he was awkward to enter,
I felt free to wander.
Shelves lined with carefully painted toy soldiers
and tanks that "took up space"<---- said his mom.
Glossy posters held the walls ransom
and camourflaged his living space.
If you didn't look carefully where his encyclopedias hid,
the jotter books found shelter under them.

But.
With a pause to all this tangential talk,
preamble and chit- chat,
All I want to tell is about the punching bag.
It hangs black, still, in the middle of the room.
From the projecting metal from the sky,
It cries out, " throw me one- show me what you've got"
"If I'm not moved, you have not giv'n me the lot.

Doesn't matter that his lamp illuminates softly all around
Or that his bedsheets boasts of "SHREK and Donkey"
In fairytale green.
The dark knight in his PVC armour
is seen, still, from every corner.
He titillates and he mocks-
Doesn't matter if you are boy or girl, grown woman or man.
The punching bag beckons when it can.

I enter the teenager's room.
My fists are clenched, my body leans.
I am surprisingly angry at the punching bag!
for all my thirty-five of grief and angst.
" Where have you been all these years,
When I have had only got the wall?"
I raise my fist in readiness and relief.
Instead, see my scars and blue black veins that still remain.

And then I start to pour those salty tears
that never came when I hit the wall.
I look at the punching bag which I can no longer hit,
when suddenly my fists feel both pain and paralysis.
I walk to SHREK and Donkey, crying like a child.
And lain balled up on this teenage boy's bed.

And then i heard footsteps, the boy showed up.
With a jolt and quickly reorganized face,
he stumbled and mumbled across his words.
"mom says pudding's ready. Dessert's ready. Pudding for dessert"
And quickly backed and bounded off down where he came.
I could almost hear his whisper as I quickly wiped my tears
"My teacher's crying on my bed!"