A Tour of My Closet

I figured you could all crowd inside 

I didn’t even know I was in one for a while 

So I wander in and out bohemian style, giving tours

To any who deserve one 

And who won’t throw clothes on the floor. 

I’ve collected a trove over the years

Organic, cotton ideas of what makes a human being

Held up on hangers feminism provided before I knew the word

Notes clipped to the side, scrawled in ballpoint pen,

Questions like—why are my traits undesirable in men?

I can wear a pantsuit and have sex appeal, but my friend from

Texas reels backwards to avoid the blow

Of a man who spurns him, at his throat

For some liquid liner

And nail polish we put on so carefully together.

And I know I’m preaching to the choir,

But I guess I’m still new here.

The bigotry feels too current still.

Some things clipped up there

Odds and ends, strings of reason void of tethers

Gutted ideas, still feathered out and cooling

Stories of a community I don’t know yet

Banding together—not a new thing.

So I cautiously bend around the corner 

and feel the colors out with my fingers, trying to understand something I’m a part of now, some new metallic paint drenched on my forearms now, still feeling I don’t quite deserve to be here when I don’t understand it all yet.

My true love and I, we’re both bi. 

And together we talk freely, yell in silence, spit poetry, ring rafters to truth and gasp how it gleams sharp and cuts our hands at each grasp. 

We knew that these fireworks wouldn’t sit well with the folks during a visit 

So I buffed out the corners, put up chalk and smoke

To make the walls a paste, instead of the 

confusing ecstasy they were before, line drawings

Of what I perceived my sexuality might be, clothes set

Neatly in their rows, and in a moment

My spacious haven shrinks into the size of a Walmart changing room 

To meet the blink and blur of eyes

To meet an expectation. 

My closet breathes in and out, contingent on the company 

And for now, that’s fine

But I don’t want it to be fine

It’s my first jolt of knowledge, that I require a redesign around certain people. 

Even when they blink across my mind

I scan the barcode, red-lasered the item is named, yet

I'm not registered at the store,

do you feel

me?

I hold the prospect of the people I will know

uncertainly in my hands,

gingerly balancing

grey cardboard boxes I've forgotten how

to open.