POETRY ON MEDIUM

Closets are for Clothes

Closets are for clothes, they say, not people. Storing dresses, heels, wigs, underwear, and secrets. Some have brooms, towels, rags, vacuum cleaners, buckets, Mundane household items, indecorous for civic display.

Closets are for ghosts — real and imagined With murky nooks and dirty crannies That hide hurtful tales and bloody lies.

Closets have memories, exciting and erotic. A stolen kiss, fidgety hands down pants, Hiding places for seedy magazines and kinky belts.

Closets are for people to come out of And for some, to hide in.

Claustrophobic for some Cocoons for others. Some are sites of violence and horror Others a refuge from the same.

Closets are for people to come out of. A luxury. Not everyone can fit into closets. Some are robbed of the chance to come out.

I wish I could find one to fit inside To shut and lock a version of myself securely And experience its comforts. I wish I had a closet so that I could come out For myself, as myself.

*******

The world knew it before I did I was a child, not yet grown enough. They sensed, felt, and saw it Never let me forget it.

Maybe it was the way my hips moved; Gyrating from side to side when I walked. The limpness of my wrist, gesticulating in animation. Maybe it was my voice, the croaky sound of it Did I sound funny even then?

We experience the world through our senses I cannot remember when I first sensed it I cannot remember a time I wasn’t aware I just knew it one day, and that was it Sense foreshadowing knowledge.

I sensed it in their sly smiles Inside jokes that I was excluded from. I sensed it the moment I entered a room In their glances, real and imagined. I sensed it in the way of experience An experience of exclusion and pain.

The world knew it before I did I was a child, not yet grown enough They sensed, felt, and saw it Never let me forget it.

*******

The child in me is still there Though I have aged in years. The child in me still yearns to come out For myself, as myself.

Some break out of their closets. Some open it slowly, a bit at a time Tentative, furtive, unsure, scared. And some get theirs knocked down Robbing them of the dignity of coming out.

The doors to my closet were blasted out Way before I was aware of it. And when I did, it was too late Nature had outed me before I could, To a world that never let me forget.

I retreated further inside Into drawers and hidden chambers. I found small nooks of shame And discovered crannies of abuse, That still holds bloody traumas and scars of hate.

Now, I live in closets within closets within closets Trying to find the keys to one and the passcode to the other. Never settled; always searching; Scheming, stealing, yearning, screaming To come out and break free of them all For myself, as myself.

********

Labels are for clothes, they say, not people. I have never really thought much of them, Until they became fashionable. Labels matter, don’t they?

Finally, I have found a closet Big enough to contain me. Finally, I have a chance to come out For myself, as myself. But now, I am not sure what my self is.

Labels cannot fit into what I feel. Labels are an externality, a window dressing, Clothes to cover what I feel.

Closets are for clothes. Clothes have labels. Some humans like them. Some reject them. Some choose to be them, To remain in the safety of closets.