There’s something I have to tell you
She said
Leaning forward
Her tone shifting
Eyes widening
We had been talking about the summer
Just before
The food we ate
The empty days
The endless walking
The corn field where we lost the dog
(He turned up at the pub
Covered in burrs)
The one by the sea
Where we felt invincible
And the one when it rained
And I fell into the mud
Reaching for the stile
Muddy
Glistening
I was still in the memory of that
Feeling the stickiness of the mud
The warmth of the wood
The joyful absurdity
When the air crackled with those words
There’s something I have to tell you
If I was more dramatic
The clocks would have stopped at that moment
A bird would have flown into the window
A crow or a raven
Squawking a warning
But as it was
I simply said, what’s that?
It’s a thing I do
Perform like a circus seal
Throwing out the words that people want to hear
When what I actually want to say is
Keep it to yourself
But it remains stuck inside
Like a song you wake up to
And hum mindlessly all day
She continued
You can’t tell anyone
Hissing the words quietly
Her eyes shining
So persistent
My gin was warm
All the ice had melted
Fingerprints on the glass
A taste on my tongue
Of what was to come
And then out they came
Her words
Disrupting the air
Filling me with sadness
Filling me with knowledge that can no longer be undone
I don’t like secrets
The weight of them
Like smooth pebbles
They sit inside and pull me down
All that responsibility
And the request not to tell
Is suffocating
It makes me want to tell everyone
So that I alone
Do not have ownership
They live in my stomach
Those dark heavy pebbles
Until my body cannot hold them
Until out they come
In a spiraling betrayal
I lean forwards
Eyes widening
Tone shifting
As I say to a friend
There’s something I have to tell you
And even when she blanches
Pulls herself from the mud
Grips onto the wooden stile
In futile desperation
Still I share
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