The Secret Enclosure

About this poem

I can’t remember when, but it was sometime before March 7, 2009, I originally published this poem along with Self-imprisonment on poetry.com. I feel like it was sometime around the 2003-2005 time frame, or earlier if memory serves. This was the time period it was owned by the Maryland-based company called The International Library of Poetry, and before I entered graduate school for education and English. The poems are about struggling with stumbling blocks in your faith. As it pertains to me, it was about stumbling blocks in my Christianity and the feeling that you’re losing ground to your worse demons than to your better angels. The poems were written in the early to mid-nineties, during a time I was focused on my faith and attending some very conservative churches, which has since changed after escaping an abusive man who was trying to change my sexuality by force and coming out. This version of the poem is slightly different than the 2000s version on poetry.com, which was more overt. more »