Secrets for Sale

Tag sales fill me with such puerile anticipation. Imagine my delight as I came across a collection of poorly written poetry today.

A simple fabric-covered book with ruled pages, all defaced by some rebellious teenager's attempt at proving she had "issues." Attention-seeker gone wrong. If you wanted them to notice, kid, you could have just cut yourself.

I bought it anyway. Four bucks seemed like a small price to pay to protect a stranger's secret.

When I got home I made a cup of tea and sat on the couch.

The sallow-faced woman who sold me the book had wrapped it in a paper bag. I opened the top of it and dumped the contents out. She threw in a bookmark. How thoughtful — as if she thought I might actually want to remember where I left off.

I open the front cover and find, to my surprise, the name Christina carefully drawn in curly script letters. The i's were even topped with little stars instead of dots.

I started to fan through the pages — something about the smell of books, old or new, makes me think of summers back home — when a small square of paper slipped out and onto the floor.

As I leaned down to pick it up, I knocked over the tea cup at the edge of the table, spilling hot Earl Grey all over my arm ... and the piece of paper.

The ink started to run and the writing was forever washed away, replaced by a lingering hint of bergamot.

Christina's secret remains safe even from my eyes.

Stung by disappointment, I move to the kitchen.

As I rip off a few paper towels from the roll, I toss the book into the trash. I picture my four dollars in the pallid woman's fingers and I sigh.

• • •

Reset

I was born.

Not in the conventional way, screaming mother squeezing and pushing a squirming life from the confines of her warm and comfortable womb.

My birth was an awakening — the destruction of a shell that had impeded my senses, numbing my psyche.

I drifted slowly into consciousness, static ebbing and flowing in a natural rhythm as sound entered my ears. Light began to filter through my closed eyelids, shapes dancing in a spectrum of colors as the noises around me increased in tempo. Every individual neuron in my brain sparked to life one by one, each time sending a jolting wave of feeling to the very tips of my limbs.

Your voice. It had injected life into every crevice of the individual that would now belong to only you. Each word you spoke cast a line to my body and pulled it closer to yours.

I was willing to believe even your lies; it made no difference if they were told with a gleam in your eye and a guilty set to your mouth. I knew I would trust you with the every individual fiber of my new being, regardless of whether you planned to shred it bit by bit and send it to the darkest corners of the universe.

I let myself follow you to the exit — feet so sure of themselves that they couldn’t even slip on slick oil — knowing that if I didn’t, I’d suffer the agony of feeling every cell in my body writhe in pain as they screamed your still-unknown name.

We left while the moon was still high and the darkened clouds gently rolled across the night sky. The breeze stroked every individual leaf of the trees, writing a symphony that had a warning woven through its cadence. I was happy to ignore it as long as you kept your stunning gaze locked with mine.

The world was mystifying. All that I had experienced while enclosed in a shell of self-preservation was fresh when seen with the clarity only you could provide me.

You gave me hope — something I’d been unable to feel before you leaned in earlier that night and breathed my name into my ear. A wave of recognition overcame my body when it registered your voice.

A quandary: How could I be the recipient of a gift so perfect and yet it required no sacrifice in return? Surely it was not possible.

Your touch. It sucked the life from my veins, blood cell by blood cell. Just as slowly as I was delivered to you, your fingers grazing my bare shoulders submerged me inch by inch, pushing me down into an ocean of pain, icy knives piercing the darkest places of my brain.

The moon faded below the horizon as my body was battered against a reef of realization. The comprehension of deceit was overwhelming as it sent excruciating reminders to my core.

Time slowed to a crawling pace before it quivered and stopped altogether.

I died.

And you whispered my name.

The end was the beginning; the beginning, the end. A cycle not unlike the seasons; winter white blanketing my senses, summer sun melting my heart.

•   •   •