In you swoop, with your skeleton key
Your well-thumbed dictionary
And your careful schooling
Giving labels to vague sensations
Giving names to my complications
Inking in the pencil sketch
Of my loose understanding
Of these ancient inner workings

Your delicate hands, so skilfully
Unspooling films that I’ve been censoring
I rush to scramble the combination
But you come with title cards and chapters
Giving weight to the lightness of mystery
Giving mass to my coolly enigmatic air
Your finely printed atlas that studies me
The topographic contours of my character

You gently unpick the stitches of my costume
This laboriously woven mask, this cunning camouflage
Delineating the edges of my scattered mosaic
How dare you look upon and see me
Inviting me to be all the facets I fight to keep hidden
Coaxing a hire wire walk without a safety net
I don’t feel safe in your company
In danger of becoming the sum of all I am

You come to me 
With your skeleton key 
And my weeping face 
Does not know what to do…