When We Learned To Become Chameleons

we kept all things

special in secret boxes of flesh and bone

suspended in little squares of liquid silence, hidden

from adults, whose colorless eyes

could dry up whole seas

of inky mystique we learned

we learned to look on either side of ourselves

& quite seamlessly fade from magenta to puce

we learned to creep carefully in

conversation, to keep the cupboards closed tightly

when company was over, smile and take the cookies

offered us—please & thank you, curtsey, ma'am—and walk

along the curb, keeping clear of the muck-muddy, leaf-clotted

gutters, those dirty veins of our pounding hearts

until they too dried to dust

& blew away with our little boxes, forgotten

—Sarah Yost