Peek-A-Boo

I see you, Standing there in the corner of the room, wearing responsibility like a heavy wool coat. I've watched you now for quite sometime, buttoning and unbuttoning. Sometimes you fidget, like you want to be free of the warmth and the smell and the way that it itches at your skin, but, you always keep it on. You have sometimes looked longingly out the window, at the men who walk the streets unencumbered by coats of their own. You think to yourself how jolly it would be to be out there, even for just a while, but you never go. My mind imagines how heavy it must weigh on your shoulders and the strength you must need in your neck and back to remain so erect in your posture, I wonder that you are not bent after all these years.

I see you watching me too, in a coat of my own. Flitting here and there wearing it as lightly as a summer jacket for an unexpected cool breeze. One moment on and the next lain down somewhere and forgotten. You want to yell at me for that, I know. To scream at me the injustice of it all. Usually, though, I turn an insolent look in your direction, both of us aware of the roles we play in our costumes. Yours is the greater burden I know, and even in moments of resentment, I love that you wear that ugly coat, that beautiful, horrid, heavy coat.

I see you and the burden you bear. Even when you think I'm not looking...
I see you