Christine Barkley

Doubting Disease

I have doubted
myself. In truth that is
all I have done.
I keep closing
my fist around
a name I won’t
say. I keep opening
locks with lies,
finding the keys inside.
I opened with a lie,
that being in truth
all I have done.
I don’t doubt it.
I keep locking keys
into words where
they don’t belong.
A name in my fist
closing. When I started
writing about locks
I couldn’t stop.
I don’t doubt the lie.
This is all I have done.

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Christine Barkley is a writer based in the Pacific Northwest. Her poems and personal essays have appeared or are forthcoming in The Manhattan Review, Grain, The Journal, Rust and Moth, Massachusetts Review, Salamander, The Indianapolis Review and The Pinch, among others. She is a poetry reader for TriQuarterly and The Maine Review.