The Sunday Poet: Kimberly Michele Rhoten

Kimberly Michele Rhoten 

Kimberly Michele Rhoten is the author of “Color Outside the Lines” appearing in At My Pace: Twenty Somethings Finding Their Way as well as numerous academic works on LGBTI rights and health policy appearing in Harvard Journal of Law & Gender, World Medical & Health Policy, Economic & Political Weekly, and others. She has a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley and a Juris Doctorate from The University of Chicago Law School. Rhoten is the Assistant Director of the Public Health and Tobacco Policy Center at Northeastern Law School, and spends her spare time abstract painting and wishing she had known Anne Sexton. 

"In Here, I'm Not"

I don't miss anyone more than me

Turns out, the closet isn't locked,

It's just shut, and It's not that I'm running out of air,

but Its getting awfully difficult to breathe.

And, no. You can't let me out.


My hand is the knob.


And, no. You can't come in.


It's mine.

I don't miss anyone more than me.

Turns out, the light switch

Isn't broken, it's just off, and

It's not that I don't know me, but

It's getting impossible to recognize myself.

And, yes.

In the dark, we all look the same,

And, yes. 

In the shadows, difference hides.

I don't miss anyone more than me.

Turns out, in here, there's always a vacancy;

It's not that no-one's there, but

"What ifs" aren't paying guests.

And, yes, you can come out,

But never really leave

And, yes, you are Out, there,

but

In here, I'm not.