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.
