Poetry - Self

Room of My Own

I knew it wouldn’t be some Freudian thing
where I lay in someone else’s cement-walled room
on some anonymous cracked leather couch,
swallowed by other bodies
surrounded by their stories.
Stonewalling an old disheveled man
feigning tales of abuse
buried beneath a black iceberg,
fishing out tears
from shallow pockets.
I thought if I threw it all out there to him
nonchalantly
like tossing a handful of stones
on the floor of his office
he would see
nothing special.

Benign stories
shards of shame
like slivered glass
waiting to be smoothed over.
These jaded tales,
I was drifting downward
without a rock,
looking for something
concrete.
A cornerstone.
A room of my own
to shut out the viscous voices
that slithered under the door
and crept through the cracks in the sill

I felt like Virginia
walking into the river
with handfuls of rocks
in my pockets