There are two types of secrets
the ones sworn under oath never to tell anyone
whispered in crowded hallways
and while getting cold water from the corner store
and the ones you weren’t supposed to hear
the ones tossed in the dark, the ones forbidden
under the fingernail sensitive
top of the tongue scalding, threatening to
taser your skin with the weight, the electricity
that these words hold suspended in thick air
every Sunday evening I would listen to the
perfect consonants through the wall
the sacred sermon my mother and father would ritualize
the stories from before child, B.C
it would start with a question, so daintily pressed through
gleaming teeth
and he would bellow triumphantly about the hero within him
the time he intervened between two bloodied men with
pulpy faces touching with the grace of dancing gods
his fists gracefully gliding between a pool of face
and can’t we calm down, and can’t we breathe the hot asphalt
of the day, the gravel of car exhaust ******* out
our sweat, I think you can
and these men with missing teeth and missing souls
would spit but their heads would level and my
heart would soar up through the ceiling, flutter right out
through
but these fairy tales were also horror stories
about the time the man was a boy and his father would
chase after him with a crowbar never to return home,
running barefoot through the hot concrete of the streets
causing blisters to appear like water balloons
popping them like the lungs that burst that day
but nothing but tears exploded out of them
and I thought I understood
the legend of the damsel in distress
my mother waiting by the door, waiting for the burns to fade from
her skin, waiting for the roof to cave in like the feelings
she promised she would swallow with cough medicine
and funerals are only birthday parties when you’re surrounded
by death, oh to be young
but then the secrets started to venture out of the confines of
my home, spilling out of my bed to become
real stories I told myself at school when I didn’t have
a Band-Aid for the scorching burn of sitting all alone
so I started living them, as I sat huddled in the bathroom
envisioning a toy cowboy stranded in the middle of the
bathtub, repeatedly soaked to make his clothes almost sun
bleached and his smile submerged, blotting, erasing
teaching myself that there’s no such thing as free will
when decisions are made for you
and this toy cowboy with his gun perched politely on his hand
Ready to deal some bullets or a handshake,
I never knew which but it didn’t matter
when there wasn’t conversation exchanged and
I wondered if he tried to escape when I wasn’t looking
did he feel like a goldfish in a bowl
his reality distorted, the glass too thick to realize
there was more than loneliness, more than
constant drowning, that being cold wasn’t a
state of being
no I don’t think so
that was the big secret you see
listening when one has nothing to say
you pick things up like lost puppies
or thumb tacks left on the floor
or you lose them like bobby pins and self-made money
my memories, my worst enemy
coming to an empty house at age 13
no home-made meal like pressing my face against
the carpet, being stealthy quiet
until I heard sound downstairs
the neighbors, the clatter of dishes being distributed
around the dining room table
laughter and television news about the ****** of a
teenager being shot outside his front yard
and this was my bread and butter
screaming of kids wrestling about who gets the
bigger piece of cake
the movement of chairs, the kissing of feet
walking from one room to the other
and although these mumbles didn’t tell their story
it told mine
the living room turning from bruised peach
to melancholy blue, solitude buzzing
through the creme brulee walls of my parents
studio apartment,
the tapping of a faucet, the slight erratic breathing
of a pipe leaking gas nearby but I survived
there are two types of secrets told
the ones you’re supposed to listen to
and the ones you forgot you knew