The Silence of a Scream

Was that too loud? Could you hear me?

When the door is shut, could you hear me?

When the door is open, do you listen to me?

Sometimes the loudest sounds are the ones we kept inside, plagued only by the fear that it was perhaps a bit too loud and someone heard us

We’ve shut the door and thrown away the key, but what comfort is that?

Did we lock ourselves out, or just shut ourselves in?

What we thought to be a way out, turned into a one-way street with no escape

We shut the door, but now where can we be free?

We removed the safety of the closet, only to replace it with the deafening, yet, still too silent scream

You thought it’d help, I tried my best

Now I cry out, but the scream drowns my voice

Where did you go? Where is the key?

I don’t know where I am anymore.

I push and pull but the door won’t budge.

Please. The scream is getting louder. Do you hear it?

It echoes in my mind.

I can’t think of anything else.

It haunts me.

It pulls me from the shadows.

I can’t help but be drawn to it.

If I keep the scream inside

The sweet embrace of the closet’s comfort

I fear it will come out

I fear I'll make a sound

I am sorry

Did you hear me? Was that too loud?

I thought at one point the closet may be a comfort. It is not. Although my scream remains silent, it has become too loud to bear. For my entire life, the broadly labeled ‘Queer’ identity has been under attack. I thought that having a group of friends who accepted me would make my life better, but the shadows of the closet became alluring again when I wanted to enter a conservative world. It is another bitter binary, to embrace who I want to be and to be happy, or to forever linger in the closet; never happy and buried unrecognizable to myself. Perhaps, I thought, it would get easier as time went on. I promised everyone I wouldn’t let anything get so bad as the stories say online. Perhaps if I cut a window into the closet, I could still maintain an attachment between my identity, inside and out.

I failed.

The window was sealed shut during the last struggle. Last week, we threw away the key. There is still a way out of it. There has to be.