Secrets - Prose.

A letter from one lover to another:

“I’ve been meaning to tell you something about me for a long time now. It’s just every time I work myself up enough to put it on the paper, my walls start caving in around me and my fingers needlessly hit the backspace key until all that I’ve written is erased. It hurts to erase it all, because I know I can’t keep it a secret from everyone forever—someone will find out, and why can’t it be you?

Why can’t it be you?

But I’m torn, lover. We’ve got such a wonderful thing going; it would be a shame to watch you walk away now. I would store my heart away, leftovers in a plastic Tupperware container. I wonder if you’d take a plate of it with you, shove it in your own fridge. Maybe you’ll pull it out once in a while, consider it might be as savory tasting as the first time, and push it to the back again.

But in the same stroke of breath, I also know the only way for this to last is to bare everything, teeth and all. I must relinquish not only the poised, cultured side of myself, but also the raw unhealed structure that keeps all that eloquence standing.

Even now I feel my whole body revolting, lurching for that ever present backspace key. I don’t know why I’m still writing this—maybe I feel like the more I write, the less chance I have to block all this away again.

All this stupid baggage I come with. You must be getting tired of it by now. My bones ache from carrying it around on my shoulders. My brain pounds from creating the exaggerated swirls to cover it all up.

It’s a shame. I was so close this time.”

Your lover.

- - -

Secrets. Whoever invented them must've been an elaborate thinker. They're strange little objects of our brains, aren't they?

I though it might be an interesting excercise to write out what might go through someone's head if they had a big secret to tell. In this case, something hidden from a significant other.