Oh, so ya wanna know about The Beast, right?
OK so it first happened in Year 2
though Mum says I was always throwin tantrums
when I was proper little
but on this day summat happened to spark it
to release it
can’t even remember what it was
someone nicked my pencil maybe
or a push in the line
on the way back from assembly.
All I remember is from
somewhere really deep down in me
I feel a darkness risin but like a hot darkness
like fire and smoke all mixed together
and my fists are flames
and the next thing I know I’m curled up in
the Sunshine Room cryin and cold
and, man, I’m tired so tired
and my teacher Miss Nolan’s rubbin my back and
the whole room’s in bits the whole world is.
I’d been carried out the classroom with a chunk of
some poor kid’s ponytail in my hand.
It happened again a week later so they
got Mum in and she had to come to meetings at
school to talk about my issues and then I had
to go see this woman every week, Miss Hough,
a counsellor, to talk and draw
and find a way to keep The Beast at bay.
Two years it took us. Two years of talkin
and drawin and learnin to breathe in a way that let
me control that beast, rather than it controllin me.
So if ya see me startin to breathe
in a strange way right, I in’t crazy or nothin.
I’m self-regulatin, innit.
© Matt Goodfellow from The Final Year (Otter-Barry Books)