I've hidden my keys under a mattress
I use them to unlock the hidden
Corners of my mind
To enter the houses I've built
Uncover the dusty blankets
I put my thoughts under so many years ago

Toys
Dump trucks, action figures
Stained clothes
Falling down the stairs
Crying
Thoughts of soaring with birds

I searched through the toys
And find a small child hiding inside
I don't recognize him
But I recall his youth

Happiness
Running in the yard with his brothers friends
Catch with father during his brothers soccer games
Playing in the backyard with friends

The floor creaks underneath us
The light streaming through the small room I unlocked dims
Darkens
The floor creaks until it cracks
It cracks until it breaks
Falling through the floor
Into a locked room below

This is not my room
I don't have a key to this one
The child calls to me from above
Hanging on from the hole in the ceiling
He tells me he won't see me again
But that I have his best wishes

This room is as dark
As the room when the floor cracked
I stretch my hands out
And crawl through the room

In the corner I find a desk
A child sits in it
I ask who they are
And they respond:

I'm not allowed to talk

Just like my brother described his first grade class
He has no work done on his paper
In his locked room
It's only darkness
With a child in the corner
Afraid to speak

I see a broken saxophone
And marijuana hidden under his bed
A confused child
Who is punished for existing

I sit crying in his dark room
Lost in his world
And he gets out of his chair
And comes to me
Kneeling down, he looks me in the eye and asks me

Do you remember how one day 6 years ago, mom started crying for no reason? And then the next week I started going to therapy?

He's 22 years old and his brain is still broken
I'm 16 years old and I understand why

He opens his door and sends me into my room
To reach under the mattress
And grab another key

The key goes into the red lock
Inside was a 10 year old laying on a bed
******* for the first time
And I'd love to tell you all that this story has a ******
But it literally doesn't

Instead there was pain
Confusion
Crying
Rushing to the bathroom
And vomiting from the pain
He comes back and looks at me standing in the doorway
He asked me what happened

So I told him
He loved himself a bit too hard
Constricted his own urethra with a firm grip
And his orchestra teacher in his thoughts

I told him what was coming
Which was a week of crying in front of a toilet
Trying to **** with hardly anything coming out
Finally telling your parents that you hurt
But you "don't know why"
And so the doctor figures it out
And fixes it

With embarrassment in your heart
And confusion about your orchestra teacher in your mind
You head into the hallway

Inside every door there's a new experience
The first time I tried ***
Passing a Gatorade bottle around a circle

Drunk and grabbing a guy
******* a girl the next day
Soberly grabbing another guy
And hating him for the rest of the week

And then I walk into the final room
It's bright
Just a fluorescent light in the ceiling
Mirrors on every wall and on the floor
The wall in front of me shows
My hopes and dreams
A teenage boy hanging with a fallen chair in front of him

And when I turn around the door I walked through
Was no longer there
But there's another mirror
Showing a man
Typing away at a computer
Smiling because he finished a news story about happiness
And no one understood it

On the wall to his left
Was a clean shaven man
Lifting his child in the air
Kissing his wife on the cheek

And in the last reflection
I saw myself
I lifted my hand
And so did the reflection
A single tear streaked both of our faces
And it splashed the ground
The mirrors rippled
And only one of them changed

People rushed to save me
Lifting me up from my legs
Throwing the chair to the side
Loosening the rope around my neck
Set to the ground
And they all walk away

The boy gets up and stares back at me
And we cried