Secrets

Tell me all your silly secrets
whisper them into my hair when it gets red and curly
when we're dancing fast and it starts bouncing all about my face
when the music's playing way too loud, tell me then
when I have to struggle if I really want to hear.
I'll listen hard if you ask me to.

Tell me something that made you laugh
when it would have made more sense for you to cry.
Tell me what you were just about to say!
before you stopped and second-thoughted
in my face.
I want to know.

Tell me a real secret
one that only a handful of people have ever heard before
a secret that would never make its way into a public poem
but fills up pages in the chapbook of your private life.
secrets that bring you shame
or fear
or a loss of pride,
a secret something you find barely dignified.
Suck it up and speak it all into my open palms
as I press them up against your parting lips.
Spread your secrets, spray them through the space between my fingertips,
fly them to my arms, across my neck.
Fan them, thin them til they lose their strength.
Tell me.
I can keep your secrets safe.

I have a whole box of white noise inside my chest that's waiting to be filled with something special,
something quiet,
something loud.
It's asking for your secrets.
The wanting is humming through my veins
murmuring and sighing
"feed me secrets please", it says.
Pour them over me.
Try to drown me with near misses
disharmony
mistakes
all your liquid wishes, dreams.
I'll soak them in
spin them up
and spit them out
with secrets of my own attached
by a line of silver, sharp
like the baby's breath bouquet you may have pinned onto my dress before a junior high school dance
if we'd only known each other then.

Save a secret for me from when you were that young.
I have plenty stuffed like tissues in my bra, tucked away between the braces on my baby teeth,
strolling down like pimples on my chin, across my arms
they settle in the creases of my pinkie knuckles,
the life and love lines of my palms
all cozy and polite
just waiting for a quiet hand to hold.
My secrets only need one whisper with a warm embrace
before they're ready to be told.
But all I want to do right now is hush
and listen to whatever shhhs and don't-tells
your silence has in store.