Poem: My Closet Wears Many Hats (2013)

Getting as far away as I have from the days when I wrote this poem is one of the best things I've ever done.  The road is long and it's rarely easy, but for me, it's been so worth it.  Here's to the journey, wherever you may be on it.

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My Closet Wears Many Hats

 

Sometimes you’re my magic trick –

Now they see me, now they don’t.

I shut myself in

And spin myself around.

Cuffing my hands behind my back,

I hold my breath and tongue

As your chamber fills with water,

And then I disappear.

But you’re a secret vanishing act,

Because no one knows I’ve gone.

Sometimes you’re my stronghold.

Wrapping your walls around me,

I find refuge within;

No slight or suspicion

Can pierce my defenses

When I walk surrounded by your ramparts.

You stand ever fast

When the battering ram bears down

And I rest safe in the knowledge

That only I can fell you.

You’re the fear of whispers at my back,

My averted eyes, my fading voice.

You’re the truths I brush away

And the lies I die to tell.

I hope you’ll one day be my chrysalis,

The empty husk left behind

To show that the me who emerges

Is a brighter me

Than the me who stepped inside.