KEEPING SECRETS, LYING AND OVERSHARING AS A WRITER (don’t worry, they’re never your audience)

                I’ve been thinking about how I should present this matter gently. Ever since it crept inside of me I’ve felt stones building up into my frame and cavities, and I said violently ‘mother, I’ve been dancing with the wolves and felt the guilt of every mind I’ve ever encountered.’ But the real question of this matter is not exactly about how I should keep everything concealed within myself without letting it pour. It is about: where and how am I allowed to express sensitivity without being caught? Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve never felt weakness in the peculiar act of expression. Because what are people anyway and what is sensitivity anyway, and how am I supposed to explain the violence I feel will always come from love and not hatred? Anyway, it is all a cloying taste and it will never fail to be scrutinised by every fallen tree, every bird losing its beak to a oh-too though walnut. If you’re wondering what the crux of all this is – I want the gentleness. 

                It is no secret that I’ve been delirious with want and need, and the strings of your hair against my palms. Anyway, where is the gentleness? And where does anger hide in all of it, and when does it creep out of its hidings to press its elbow against the back of my head with excruciating force and understanding? I am, in fact, angry. About what I don’t know, about who I don’t know. About anything and everything that comes into sight and I can’t touch. Absence of contact. Too much contact. Too much happiness I can’t seem to grasp. Too much want which I can’t seem to achieve. The pointlessness. The impending doom of loss of love. The hunger. Oh, the hunger. How can I fill the space and the need? How can I shush the verses of loud hands without tying them to my back? I can hear them everywhere and they can’t seem to stop shaking. And talking. And hitting me. Where do I pour all of this without them tasting it? But I want them to taste it and digest it and vomit it if they must. Just don’t ask me about it.

                I lie to them and say I don’t know you anymore. I keep it a secret like I was once opened by your knife and now I am healed and the wound closed. It is unbearable to hide everything in my skin ‘cause I walk it around everywhere and I walk with you everywhere and I shouldn’t care about your presence unless you place your gentle stare into my hands and let me kiss it. See what just happened? I can’t actually keep anything a secret. I spill it out everywhere like the warm milk in my sister’s strawberry red cup. And I am ashamed at times but I know I shouldn’t. You don’t walk around here, you never take a cigarette break around the time of my words. Frankly, I never said anything either. So I shall apologise for the inconvenience and admit shily that everything is, in fact, about you. But my concern was never about the possibility of your presence here, but about the questions, the assumptions, the ‘are you really this little, this desperate?’ Yes, yes, yes and I wanna witness you all over again. See what just happened again? I can’t seem to lie about it either. It’s written all over my face like the maroon flush of wine running down my cheeks, like the swollen lips of violent kisses, but never like the grip of my hand on your shoulder which never seemed to leave a mark. I only make sounds to myself. Only I remember me. 

I never know when something is dead. And I lie and deceive until I am only made of secrets. I sing to it and imagine it still walking around the house because I never know when something is dead.