Legitimate, Forbidden and Everything in Between

Hidden

I never realized,
when I turned such a pro
at hiding things.

Not that I've had any dearth of tutorials.
I remember four year old me
Asking Mamma
Why she wore dark glasses
To hide her swollen eye.
Why she passed off a bruise as conjunctivitis.
Why she narrated an amusing story
About how she'd walked into a door
To explain that welt over her forehead
When the truth was far from funny.

The first thing
I've had occasion to hide
Was an assessment paper
The red marks my teacher
had left liberally all over
Were complemented perfectly
By that 3 on 20 score
Glaring back at me
Like the ominous brand
Of some medieval pagan cult.

Perhaps I started showing signs
Of the natural I was
At this unscrupulous game of hide-and-seek
When I had to hide
My very first period stains
That had very inconveniently arrived
When I was in school.
Even as I bit my lip through the excruciating pain
I had enough sense not to leave my seat throughout the day
For every commercial I'd seen
Showed period blood as a pristine blue liquid
Telling the world we actually bled blood that was red and smelled like rust
Would be blasphemous;
Even immature 12-year old me was sure of this.

But the real challenge I faced
Was to hide a suicide note,
Written in a frenzy of overwhelming rage,
From the prying eyes of my mother.
So I tucked it sneakily between the pages of a self-help book
(Hope the irony is not wasted)
All ready to scribble a shaky signature and say goodbye
When I could no longer hold on to life
By the skin of my teeth.

So, it's been a decade and a half of rigorous practice
Of hiding, of lying, of feigning composure.
I've mastered every hack in the book,
From passing off the scars on my wrist
As a sloppy accident with a compass,
To pretending that my panic attacks were just PMS-es,
From not raising my hand when #MeToo said I could, I should,
To smiling that non-committal Schrondiger's smile.
And I know I will pass this expertise on,
To another generation of lost, pained vagrants,
So that they can pretend they know their way.

Hi, all. So, I've been writing poetry for half a decade now, but I haven't had the guts to put it out publicly. But my pseudonym on Wattpad gives me a secure iron curtain, and so here I am. This could end up as a one-shot, or maybe, it could be a collection of poems. Depends on what y'all want it to be. So, show some love (or the lack of it). To everyone who wants to show their approval/appreciation/constructive criticism/all of the above, the comment box is all yours. Also, if you like this piece, go and hit that little star. Love, love.