hide? i'm not hiding. i'm waiting for someone to take me away. i sink my arms deeply into a basket of wet towels. i grab towel after towel, shirt after shirt, hanging my madness out with wooden clothespins.
i stiffened. two clothespins jam imto my mouth, and i reach down for a pair of my socks. i pick up a pair of my socks and add those to the line as i pray hard that people will just ignore me.
you want me to talk? how? i stuff my feelings and they layer themselves like parfait dessert in the innermost part of my being. inside, where nobody can see, i am glorious with the colours of the girl i wish i could be.
i know i'm a candle, because sometimes the flame inside of me burns higher and the wax that covers me starts to melt and drip and i'm softer and lighter and i want to dance through the fields and feel the grass rub against my bare ankles. but on other days, the days when i slam doors and scream, the flame dies out and the wax hardens, and i close up, covered by wax again, like chocolate crackle on an ice cream cone.
most of my life i have been a bird tethered to the ground, my speech the leather strap that binds me to earth. but as i sit here in the silence, i feel the tethers loosen, and i can almost fly.
lately, i bloom a little more from the spot deep inside myself. i am a chrysanthemum, a late bloomer, a fall bloomer, a bloomer nonetheless.