Check out

A poem I wrote some months ago that has been haunting my drafts folder…

You checked out

Because you couldn’t bear the reality

Or the skin

You were asked to live in

Who did the asking?

What was the question?

You felt the need to pretend

You knew the answer to?

Was it a foregone conclusion?

Now you look back on the madness

The deep confusion

And know it for what it was

But do you know who you are

Or who that was

Playing out another hand of cards

Who are you today?

Are you the player or the played

For that old self is gone

You shed it like an old straight jacket

That grew too tight

Inside which

You struggled to breathe

And now the cost of looking back

Is a forgetting of that old self

And the remembering

That on a new day

You are free to choose

To check in

To your inner reality

Where you ignore others questions

And find instead

Your own answer and meaning

Deep in your soul