Secrets

Secrets
L.W.Nelson

Secrets

6/6/24

Secrets

Linda Williamson Nelson

I want to write secrets, but not the ones you only tell close friends. Even better ones are those you shuffle around in the heart, wondering if anyone would care to know. But they are secrets to you because the words are hanging on trees, nearly bare, but saving what you held for so long, like a small and last bit of candy, tight in the fist. How long can you hold the secret beauty of a city park, strewn with broken bottles, candy wrappers, and lovers’ left-over things that were mysterious, yet so urgent to your curiosity. But big sisters, doing their duty, taking you out to play knew to pull your arm and utter quiet words; then, said too loud, “But there are the swings! Didn’t you want to swing?”

I did. But in those long-ago days, secrets were magnetic– curiosity of little minds pulled toward the unknown. I promised I would return and learn all about cast-away things, like the amber rocks that promised to be gold, riches to move us far from this place, to verdant hills that were clean and welcoming to little kids with imagination and active minds, writing stories and more stories even then. There was much to gather up, pocket it all in memory until the time came to write it down, to see what it meant. I knew that time would come when the secrets would be mine, and the stories of the hills would fill me up with more than I could carry. I would wait and listen, for I knew that silence would one day speak aloud and no one could tell me I could not know the secrets of the hills.