Public Republic

Matthew Vetter

Photo: littledan77

It is easy to find you,
because you want to be found.
You hide in the same place every time:

crouching in a pile of your mother’s shoes,
beneath a canopy of her dresses.
You knock on the folding closet doors

if it takes me too long,
impatient for the thrill of discovery.
Now it is my turn.

Count to ten,
I tell you as I walk to the bathroom.
I step into the tub and pull

the curtain, the only witness
the whiskers in the sink.
Unlike you, I am playing to hide.

Each time you pass me over,
mistakenly looking in all the wrong places,
only encourages me to be quieter,

to let my breathing slow and soften.
I have felt this before,
that I can never put enough distance

between myself and the others,
that I cannot go deep enough
into the dark quiet places of my body.