Museum of Me

For years I kept it locked downstairs and told myself that's healthy,

kept the lights off in the hallway, kept it damp and kept it heavy,

and a thing you keep in darkness doesn't shrink, it starts to spread,

takes the shape of the whole building, gets into the bread.

So I brought it up in daylight and I laid it on a table,

gave each piece a number and I gave each piece a label,

and it stopped being a monster in the moment it was catalogued —

still ugly, still mine, just no longer in charge.

Museum of me. (museum of me)

Everything's on display.

Museum of me. (museum of me)

Nothing in the basement now.

You can look at any of it.

Nothing here can jump out.

Museum of me. (museum of me)

Room one: the house, the years, the noise, the fear.

Room two: the choices that were mine, and there are many, and they're here.

That's the room I had to build last, that's the room that took the longest,

'cause a victim's just a chapter, and I wanted the whole honest.

Nobody gets to use it. That's the sign above the door.

Not the ones who did the damage, not the ones who want a war,

not a stranger with a theory, not myself on a bad night —

it's a record, not a weapon. Read it, don't fight.

"Exhibit: the winter I stopped answering."

"Exhibit: the man I became for about two years. Loaned from a private collection."

"Exhibit: the first time somebody was kind and I couldn't take it."

Museum of me. (museum of me)

Curated, not concealed.

Museum of me. (museum of me)

I wrote the plaques myself.

You can look at any of it.

Nothing here can jump out.

Museum of me. (museum of me)

Museum of me. (museum of me)

Open hours, honest labels.

And admission's free to anybody

willing to be honest back —

and closed, permanently closed,

to anyone who wants a souvenir.

Museum of me. (museum of me)