The secret does not want
to come out of the closet.
It is very comfortable,
thank you very much,
snuggled as it is
into the sweatshirts and old t-shirts
that no one ever wears
nearly forgotten up there
on the top shelf. And it
would rather the closet
stays just as it is. No rearranging,
no digging through the layers,
no taking things away to Good Will.
Perhaps you forgot that the secret
has teeth. Sharp. Don’t worry. If you
so much as open the closet door
you’ll remember soon enough.
This one’s particularly nice, I think. The talkyness of that fourth-fifth line is enchanting, with the secret making its own excuses, not the author. Very nice. And as the poem continues, the reader is still in the closet, until the end of course, when the possibility comes out.
[…] Though It Happens Anyway (ahundredfallingveils.com) […]
A skeleton in the closet surely…
and a squirrel and a monkey and a dream … actually, it was a dream, this poem, about a monster, and I just turned the monster into a secret in the writing …