Raincoats for Our Secrets

We stitch raincoats for our secrets out of half-remembered nights,

from shower curtains, childhood quilts, and hand-me-down goodbyes.

We button them with “never told” and zip them up too tight,

Then hang them in the hallway where no one can see the size.

~𓆩𓆪~𓆩𓆪~

Each secret is a weather front that builds behind the eyes,

a thunderhead of almost-said that never makes a sound.

We dress it in a plastic sheen and call it “it’s alright,”

Then watch our inner forecast drown the safest patch of ground.

~𓆩𓆪~𓆩𓆪~

You wear yours like a second skin in every crowded room,

a glossy hood for trembling thoughts that fear the naked air.

I see the way your laughter leaks, a drip of honest gloom,

and know there’s hail behind that smile you say is “just a dare.”

~𓆩𓆪~𓆩𓆪~

I used to keep my storm maps rolled inside a careful drawer.

Pretend that lightning never struck the house I called my chest.

But secrets, left in cotton, mold and rot into the floor—

So I wrapped mine in yellow slickers and hoped for the “driest” best.

~𓆩𓆪~𓆩𓆪~

The thing about a raincoat built for what we never say

is sooner or it later, love, it soaks from the inside.

The sweat of all that hidden weather turns to heavy clay;

We start to drown beneath the gear we thought would let us hide.

~𓆩𓆪~𓆩𓆪~

So meet me by the window when the sky decides to bruise.

We’ll shrug off vinyl armor with our fingers, slow and kind.

We’ll hang our damp confessions where the breeze can choose its use,

and let the clothesline take the weight we’ve knotted in the mind.

~𓆩𓆪~𓆩𓆪~

We’ll watch our secrets dripping down in honest, silver threads,

not flooding but releasing, drop by drop, from sleeve and seam.

No spotlight, just a quiet yard, two softly bowed heads,

and puddles shaped like former fears that no longer must gleam.

~𓆩𓆪~𓆩𓆪~

Tomorrow, if the clouds return, we’ll still have coats to wear—

but lighter ones with open hems and vents for speaking through.

Not armor built to seal us off from anyone who cares,

just weatherproof enough to say, “It storms inside me, too.”