How Do You Hide? 

Do you cover your mouth 

when your colleague tells a joke?

Do you retreat into the closet

behind the hanging suits

and boxes of old mementos

when you hear shouting in the kitchen?

Do you dress up in your older brother’s clothes

and drive like him with your foot on the gas?

Do you sit quietly, 

your hands in your lap,

a placid, impenetrable face,

while curling your toes in your shoes

where no one can see them?

Or do you yell and yell and yell and yell

so that no one, 

not even yourself, can hear you?

©2023, Rachel Starmer

From the backside of "Mr. Pink's Place" by Kristian Adam.