Closet Camouflage

Closet Camouflage

ETHAN WIDLANSKY

I put the straight jacket on inside-out, holding my selves together to myself. I am watching your face fade nostalgic. You look back through mirrored glass, swirling with sand motes of memory that dot the bathroom’s waning shafts of light. How do I miss you? I try to tune a psychic dial to white noise and drown out this past that I can’t want to know better. I left my new home for an old one, knotted by time’s tangled skein to the person I used to be. We talked and I felt my selves slip. Mom is sad I’m sad She puts her ear to the door to know me better. That’s mom’s love: ties criss-crossing time like gossamer, swaddling me to suffocation. Phosphenes cloud your form with color, shocking your veil of silt with black and white and red. It’s a scene of closet camouflage