I’ve always been good at hiding.
I hid in closets, under tables, in crawl spaces.
Sometimes I was too good at hiding, I hid under a pile of laundry, planning to ambush my mom, but it took too long and I fell asleep.
I woke up and my parents were on the phone reporting me missing.
And it’s not just me, I am also good at hiding THINGS.
Like, money, or my feelings,
I’ve been hiding my feelings as long as I can remember.
I have to.
Feelings left out in the open will almost always fuck me over.
Someone’ll come along and beat me with one of my own feelings like it was a pipe wrench.
Sometimes I’ll put on an old jacket and find hundreds of dollars I hid in the pocket years ago.
Sometimes, in the middle of the night I’ll be thinking about something long ago and open a box of some fucked up feelings I forgot I buried there.
Then I’m screwed for hours of wide awake anger or pain.
It doesn’t matter that there’s good stuff buried in with or under the bad shit.
I mean, it doesn’t matter how thrilled I was when my dad gave me the guitar, or how much I loved the lessons, and playing for my class at school. All I get is the loss and dismay when he showed up and said he needed HIS guitar back. So all of it, the hours tuning, carrying, cleaning, and playing that guitar all went into the same box and got buried just deep enough to float to the surface when I least expect it.
All those fucking boxes,
packed with stuffed monkeys, tragic birthdays, public humiliation, dogs hit by cars, deceitful people, dead friendships, and dead friends.
They become unmarked metal jack in the box tins, and, like an idiot, I lay awake at night and crank those fucking handles.
There’s never any money hidden in those things.
The money is always harder to find because I leave it places I think nobody would think to look.
I’m fooled by my own logic because I’m just putting it in places I would never think to look.
I’m only hiding it from myself.
I think I might be hiding from myself.
That’s a weird one, and I don’t like to spend time cranking the handle on that.
I mean, I know exactly where I’m hiding. I saw myself go in there.
I’m in the cupboard.
When I tap on the door, I don’t answer. Even though I know it’s me out there tapping.
I don’t answer, for the same reason I don’t just open the door.
I don’t trust myself.
One of me will say or do something painful or stupid,
and another part of me that hides someplace I am not yet aware of will hear or see,
and all the fucking unmarked jack in the boxes’ll fly open at once,
and it’ll take me weeks of haunted night wrestling to get them all buried again
and people’ll look at me and say things like , “you seem distant, what’s up?”
And my mind,
knee deep in celluloid film still falling off the reels will say,
“Nothing, I just had a thought, but it’s gone now”
I hid in closets, under tables, in crawl spaces.
Sometimes I was too good at hiding, I hid under a pile of laundry, planning to ambush my mom, but it took too long and I fell asleep.
I woke up and my parents were on the phone reporting me missing.
And it’s not just me, I am also good at hiding THINGS.
Like, money, or my feelings,
I’ve been hiding my feelings as long as I can remember.
I have to.
Feelings left out in the open will almost always fuck me over.
Someone’ll come along and beat me with one of my own feelings like it was a pipe wrench.
Sometimes I’ll put on an old jacket and find hundreds of dollars I hid in the pocket years ago.
Sometimes, in the middle of the night I’ll be thinking about something long ago and open a box of some fucked up feelings I forgot I buried there.
Then I’m screwed for hours of wide awake anger or pain.
It doesn’t matter that there’s good stuff buried in with or under the bad shit.
I mean, it doesn’t matter how thrilled I was when my dad gave me the guitar, or how much I loved the lessons, and playing for my class at school. All I get is the loss and dismay when he showed up and said he needed HIS guitar back. So all of it, the hours tuning, carrying, cleaning, and playing that guitar all went into the same box and got buried just deep enough to float to the surface when I least expect it.
All those fucking boxes,
packed with stuffed monkeys, tragic birthdays, public humiliation, dogs hit by cars, deceitful people, dead friendships, and dead friends.
They become unmarked metal jack in the box tins, and, like an idiot, I lay awake at night and crank those fucking handles.
There’s never any money hidden in those things.
The money is always harder to find because I leave it places I think nobody would think to look.
I’m fooled by my own logic because I’m just putting it in places I would never think to look.
I’m only hiding it from myself.
I think I might be hiding from myself.
That’s a weird one, and I don’t like to spend time cranking the handle on that.
I mean, I know exactly where I’m hiding. I saw myself go in there.
I’m in the cupboard.
When I tap on the door, I don’t answer. Even though I know it’s me out there tapping.
I don’t answer, for the same reason I don’t just open the door.
I don’t trust myself.
One of me will say or do something painful or stupid,
and another part of me that hides someplace I am not yet aware of will hear or see,
and all the fucking unmarked jack in the boxes’ll fly open at once,
and it’ll take me weeks of haunted night wrestling to get them all buried again
and people’ll look at me and say things like , “you seem distant, what’s up?”
And my mind,
knee deep in celluloid film still falling off the reels will say,
“Nothing, I just had a thought, but it’s gone now”
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