My Past Is Locked Up In My Shed

170., originally uploaded by rachel a. k..

In my shed, I’ve locked up the past.
From floor to ceiling
The past is stacked in steel crates,
A prison for each month of my life.
I need to know
That all my pain,
My mistakes, fears and regrets
And embarrassments and guilts
Are hidden in strong crates
Behind padlocked doors.

June 1992, with its shocked mouth crying
As I crammed it in a box
Was the month when I was betrayed.
October 1995, with a look of surprise and horror on its face
As I jammed it inside a crate
Was the month when I lived somewhere I regretted.
March 1996 was stuffed screaming inside another,
The month I betrayed someone else.
September 1999, cut off from the air
Behind a heavy steel lid
Was the month I met someone I want to forget about.
April 2001, when I think about it, always makes me cry.
And August 2003, like the rest tight in its coffin,
Hasn’t seen the light of day for years.

I’ve painted the shed white to look respectable
But little do you know
That when I’m inside
And I turn on the light
It always stays dark:
A thick night wraps its claws
Around the tiny bulb
And chokes it.
But sometimes you can see
The dark fear and the black regret
Creeping out of the corners of these crates,
Oozing into a puddle out of the cracks.
But as long as the shed is locked…

I’ve tried to live a life in this world,
Ran towards it with open arms
With my delicate blue skies tumbling out of my smiling hands
But the world keeps responding with a December night
And with its hatred and jealousy and suspicion and condescension towards me
The world responds by kicking me in the teeth
So… into the shed it all goes,
The world and my past
In chunks a month big.

Problem is, at three in the morning
When everyone is asleep
Wrapped up in their deep beds with their soft silence,
I can hear the past and the world
Screaming desperately to get out,
And the crates heave
And the wood splinters
And the padlocks rattle sharply
In the moonlight.

~ by Paul Badger on 18 February, 2009.