Secrets

I was hesitant to start a blog because I did not want to fill up more space with randomness ... if I was going to do this, I was going to be honest, but I've gotten away from that. Part of it is that I'm sifting through several different spiritual ideas right now, and it just seems cumbersome and boring to hash them out with everyone. The other part is that the other things that are happening in my life involve well, people, who may not want me to publicly sift through my opinions and thoughts, which is fair enough.

Alas. I feel a little stuck.

So, a compromise ... I wrote this in May.

Secrets

I read her secrets, scribbled on napkins in a bar, slippery thoughts and half-memories leaking onto the little white square. Next day, she finds them in her pocket and wonders why she ever wrote them down. No place to rest, no more energy to run. She just needs someone to fill in the gaps. She crumples the lines and throws them in the floorboard a thousand miles away. I read her secrets, the pain a warm, sour, pulsing thing. She's so far from home.

I hear her secrets, sitting in vinyl chairs in the county hospital, running her hands through dirty hair as she tries and fails to remember the birthdays of her children. She doesn't look at his tiny wrinkly fingers, she doesn't count his toes. There are no blue ribbons on the door. For one more day, she sleeps in a bed, eating slowly, hiding the last bites under her clothes. She knows she won't see this baby again. I hear her secrets, and I taste the acrid regret. It burns the back of my throat.

I know her secrets, driving a hundred miles to eat pizza and play with her hair. I hear the "yes ma'am" tattooed on her tongue. She looks taller today. Do I see her, or do I see only what I want to? I call the gnawing in my gut hunger, and talk about dance recitals, birthday parties instead. I smile when she laughs. I've never seen her cry. I know her secrets, they were carved into my skin, the words still sharp enough to draw blood. I am helpless against them.

I see her secrets, in black and white, written where only strangers will find them. She was never going to stay, she was never the type. Loud, sexy, crass – the words are everything she wasn't. How could he not have known? She was always faithful, dependable, miserable. I'm reading the story of a ghost, a friend of a friend, a shadow in the clouds. I see her secrets, and I wish I had known this girl. I'm the stranger now.