The Wardrobe of a Life
We change our names for ourselves
the way we change coats in April,
hanging up the winter
and trying on something lighter,
something that lets the wind pass through.
Some years it is enough
with a new scarf,
a different smile,
a habit allowed to grow
where an old one withered away.
Other times the entire wardrobe must go.
The clothes carry the scent
of a person
who no longer lives here.
We fill bags with the past
and step into stores of possibility.
But not everything fits.
An identity can pull across the shoulders,
sit awkwardly on the chest,
make us look strange
in the mirror
and in the eyes of others.
Still, we wear it.
We spend months
inside a life that chafes against the skin,
until we realize
the garment belonged to someone else.
Sometimes more must change.
New shoes demand new roads.
New clothes fit poorly
around old habits.
Friends fall away like buttons,
while others are sewn into place.
Who are we beneath all this?
There are days
when we believe in a naked core,
a quiet self
that never changes.
Then the years arrive
and teach us otherwise.
For some of the people we once were
are truly gone.
Not hidden beneath the fabric,
not waiting in a closet.
They died quietly
as new selves grew in their place.
We are
and are not
the same person.
Alone, we stitch one story.
Among others, we need another.
The face we offer the world
is not always the face
that wakes in the night.
And sometimes the longing grows strong
to escape ourselves.
Then we put on a new name,
a new laugh,
a life no one recognizes.
We move through the world incognito,
a stranger in our own country,
feeling a peculiar freedom
in no longer having to be
who we were yesterday.
So our lives hang in rows:
coats, shirts, masks, and skin.
Some we throw away.
Some we miss.
Some we cannot quite remember
why we chose at all.
And among all the garments,
all the changes,
all the attempts to belong
or to break free,
a closet door remains slightly open,
waiting for the next season.
— Adam Donaldson Powell
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