there is a line for the bathroom

When I write,

I write to the women

in the bathroom

I will never meet.

I know them

only by their shoes,

and they know me

only as my feet.

Accustomed

to waiting,

to observing,

to hearing everything.

Solidarity

with the other

feet

behind closed doors.

Our ‘yous’ are

not alike, but

we find a similarity

in our Defeated Doc Martens

poking out as we

strive to balance

every memory of ‘you’

on the stall walls in sharpie.

Not writing

to ‘you’, but about

‘you’. Reducing

‘you’ down,

like a chef

in a kitchen

to the lingering

feelings.

I know ‘you’

by this

lingering.

How dare ‘you’

take up the space

‘you’ do there? How

dare ‘you’ leave this

behind for me?

imprisoned caddy-corner

from this closed door, with

all of this ephemera

‘you’ abandoned.

I’ve been trying to organize

everything, but ‘you’ have all

left too much

behind.

The urge to

crawl underneath

everything’s weight creeps up

quickly, and recedes

as swiftly as it came. And

I am sitting in exactly the same

wave that ‘you’ found me: in

it all.

I have piles

and stacks and boxes,

and they do not “bring me

joy”. ‘You’ no longer

“bring me joy”.

Because I only have

that ‘you’ left, and

what’s left,

and I know

we both intended

more, and I know

that neither of us

set out to leave this

behind, to get rid of it

when we started;

but here

I sit

behind

this

closed door.

I can’t bear

to throw them out

when I know

they were so good

at some point;

put it all in a box

in the basement

like yearly decor;

drag it out when

I feel you

creeping in with a

new season, coming up

with happiness and sunshine

and dread,

somehow making flowers

even with clouds.

This stall has

clouds, goddman does

it have clouds and shit

and secrets

that used to be ours

but now there’s

no ‘ours’ and when I write,

I write to the women

in the bathroom

I will never meet.

I know them

only by their startled noises

as the other shoe drops,

and they know me only

as a closed door

creating noise from

the careful endeavor

to arrange and rearrange

ever gathering

baggage efficiently.

What I can tell

you is I’m not the only

one zipping and unzipping

as I hide in this stall,

and that starts

to overtake

the loneliness of it all.

So open the

door, and let it all out.

Leave the baggage behind,

no longer pout; set it on

fire and watch

yourself be released

from hiding

and running and

finally Be Free.