Today I am taking down my closet doors.
With my Dad’s old screwdriver, a little elbow grease,
And the sweat that will drip from my pores,
I will welcome the old me to the new one.

Tonight I twist screw from wood and pull pin from hinge.
With each nail I pry and tear I cry, I’ll persevere even if I cringe.
Tonight I permanently allow access to the new world from my old one.

These doors were a mirror of one-way glass
Once confined to a chamber imperceptible from the other side,
Slowly, I served a sentence for a crime I’d later absolve myself of.
For now I see through glass, through its facetious fallacy.

I shatter the mirror, and retrieve from it, a prism.
A new light shines onto it, forging holographic rays in its schism.
I’ll wear my wardrobe of weary, worried clothes.
Exhausted from the war fought by my constant self-loathing.

I’ve found hope, after years, in old shoeboxes, and on plastic hangers.
Now I see this dusty old closet worked in my favor.
I am a product of this mold – shaped by these closet walls
By joining old with new, closed with open, my grit will not waver.

Today I am taking off my closet doors, 
And taking down who I once swore I knew with it.