The Closet Where My Childhood Hid

I opened the door I hadn’t touched in years,

its hinges sighed like old bones in winter.

The air was thick with dust and stories

I’d locked away with trembling hands—

too young to name the ache,

too old to forget it.

Inside, the closet was a cathedral of echoes—

a tiny sock, a broken crayon,

a drawing of a sun that always smiled,

even when I couldn’t.

The light flickered,

and suddenly I was five again—

feet dangling from a too-tall chair,

listening to grown-up voices

crack like lightning

behind closed bedroom doors.

I found my old teddy,

one ear torn from years of whispers.

He knew everything—

my secret fears,

the lullabies I hummed

to drown out the thunder.

A shoebox held notes

written in block letters,

love letters to a mother too tired,

apologies to a father too far.

Each folded paper

was a paper-cut across time.

I pressed my back against the wall,

where wallpaper peeled like shedding skin.

The silence wrapped around me,

tighter than any blanket,

as if the closet remembered, too.

There were no monsters here—

just the shadow of a boy

who learned to hide his tears

in the folds of denim and bedtime prayers.

And yet,

in that stillness,

I felt the faintest tremor of grace—

the kind that only comes

when you sit with your scars

long enough to trace their stories.

I didn’t close the door this time.

I left it ajar—

not because the pain was gone,

but because I finally said hello

to the child who never left.