Give Away the Key (poem)

Give Away the Key

Let your inside be your outside

Inside

Are you wedged like an orange, or

Do you spill seeds like a pomegranate

Are you bored out like a lock that catches

Banged out like a short order

Is your mind troubled

Are you a clever puzzle solver

Cleverness is an oblique angle

Dissonance is an ornament of glass

Missing at its center

Deeply insecure under scrutiny

The authority you fear also told you

That the answer was the key

So you slice the heart

Cynically

Thinking you can’t be fooled

Yet withholding breaks the rule of trust

Which is, don’t break it

Give away the key

And never mind

Every problem must be solved

As it was constructed

Fixed

In its place and time

Uncollected Poems

(2015, Stephanie Foster)