Secrets

I told a story once. It was dark and stormy and full of strange confessions whispered into an open ear. All the world was a stage for me, and I told a story full of hope and love and heartbreak and betrayal and all the things we try to piece together to make ourselves whole.

And you listened so quietly. I threw my words like stones to see the ripples they would make on your surface. I wondered how deep they sank – sinking, sinking, all the way to the bottom of a heart I thought I knew but didn’t.

Our knees laid against each other, pulled towards our bodies as we wrapped our arms around them and leaned our heads closer together. I cupped my hand around your ear and with half-lidded eyes whispered my loneliest secrets and I could see you contemplate them, wondering what to do with all the quiet power of knowing me deeper than you had before.

“Hmmm” you hummed into the space of that dark room with the single, dimming light.

The house was quiet, and we sat huddled together, side by side, as I absolved myself of all the guilt and all the heartache, letting myself pour it out like tar into your waiting cup. I wanted you to take the drink from me – sip the dark nectar and have a taste of what it meant to be someone everyone thought they knew but didn’t. But I guess you must’ve already known how that felt.

All that time you had secrets of your own – a foggy, swirling, concoction, but you would never let me take a sip – or maybe I just never tried. Did we ever reverse the positions? Did you ever lean over and cup your hand over my ear, and with your half-lidded eyes whisper all your hidden things and let me grasp at them, gently, gently, trying not to break them?

These confidences are delicate matters, and I never got to learn how to reach out and catch them like small, weightless feathers, or like leaves I’d press between the pages of a journal and keep to look at later – keep to ponder over, and wonder about how fragile and evasive everything truly is.

I never learned that skill. I was too busy spilling my secrets and you were too busy sopping them up to share any of yours. I guess the knowing really was one-sided, and you remained a mystery all that time without me ever really realizing it.

Still, in the silence I felt close to you – like we shared something in all the hours we spent awake together in the quietest moments of the deep and lonely night. And maybe we did share something and maybe it still ties us together, even now. Something kept us sitting there, with my tired eyes and your way of making me feel like it was okay to give you everything – to let everything down, silently, without any fanfare, and just tell a story. And after giving you all of that, there was nothing left to give – not even a smile, not even an ear – and so you never confessed to anything. If you had thrown a stone, how many ripples would you have seen? The surface disturbed is a gift I never got to give you. You never got to see how even your lightest hushed confession whispered on a silent night might change some things – however quickly, however small, however seemingly inconsequential or temporary or far away.

I miss sitting against the wall with you.

I miss sharing what drink I could, even if I was selfish about it in many ways.

I told a story once, and when it was over, we both fell asleep, and in the morning the whole wide world kept turning. But I had seen the ripples in your eyes – I had heard them in your hums and sighs – and even in the familiar stillness that followed, I knew some things would never be the same.