Wednesday, January 19, 2022

Secrets


Secrets are powerful aphrodisiacs; mysterious, alluring and potentially dangerous depending on the secret and with whom you share it. 

When someone shares a secret, they give you a potent power, trusting you are the trustworthy friend they believe you are. 

Sharing a secret is relinquishing a burden, a bidding of sorts, asking someone to share the weight of whatever it is that is haunting you. 

Growing up in a Catholic home, I witnessed another kind of secret. A mass said in an arcane language and an advocation of confession. 

As you enter the confessional you are transported to a dimly lit closet size room where you kneel on a cantilevered piece of wood that has been wrapped in velvet and once settled in piety, a small, screened window quietly slides open to reveal your absolver, a stand-in god. 

You whisper your sins into the profile of a man earnestly leaning in towards the breath of your words with the sacred knowledge that what you confess will be held like executive privilege, never to be pried from his mind nor lips. He passes down his judgement through a series of penances and you rise with your soul once again bleached clean - if your conscious stays mute. 

Our secrets are witnesses to the unwritten pages between our lives.

 

Some are frivolous / some are hurtful / some are damning / some should be revealed / some will be bound in our ashes, forever silent.