Secrets

           When I went to bed that night I was still a bit unsettled.  I always needed ages to get over a confrontation, even the type that most people would classify as only a mild misunderstanding.  I lay awake for what felt like hours, but just when I thought I would never sleep suddenly I was standing in an enormous elevator.  Confused I looked around me.  That was when I saw it.

            A dragon.  A big red dragon.

            He was watching me through narrowed, yellow eyes.  He seemed dangerous in a quiet sort of way, although he said, in a perfectly polite voice, “Hello.”

            “...Hello.”

I tried to smile, but that only made him eye me with yet more suspicion, so I stopped.  “Um, are we going somewhere?” I asked him.

            “No.  At least, not yet.”

            “But we might?”

            The dragon clearly didn’t want to answer this question.  I therefore tried a different tack.  “I don’t understand why I’m here,” I said.

            “Because I wanted to know something,” the dragon replied.  He gave me a speculative look.  “Do you know who I am?”

            “No.”

            “Hmmmn,” he said. 

“Aren’t you going to tell me?”

“No.”

“Okay,” I answered, relieved for some reason.  “But what is it you want to know?”

            “Everything.  Right now, however, I’ll settle for your secrets.”

            “I don’t have any—at least, I don’t think I do.  Other than the boring kind, I mean.”

            Amused now, the dragon told me, “That’s where you’re wrong.  Your secrets are the type I find most interesting.”

            “Why?” I demanded.  “Because,” the dragon said, “they aren’t the kind you keep from others—they are the kind you keep from yourself.”

           “And what are those, exactly?”

            “That you don’t love them.”

            “Don’t love who?”

            The dragon shook his giant, scaly head.  “You’ll have to answer that question for yourself.  But when you do, remember this: love is a gift.  Not a right.”

            “What are you talking about?” I said, only to find myself in a field of flowers.  The dragon had gone.  When I looked up into the sky the sun nearly blinded me.

            In the morning I didn’t remember this dream until I was sat at the kitchen table, having a cup of coffee.  As I tried to figure it out I wondered what on earth had gotten into my psyche.  Whatever it was, I’d hoped my subconscious had worked it through, because I didn’t want to see that dragon again.  Ever.

            

Hope

I can

hold this sky

let the air exhale me instead

Roots

I slipped inside of the

oily puddle today.

Even though I knew it

was there.

The twig you threw was good

enough to save

itself, barely.

Still, it was the strangest thing.

While I was waiting,

suddenly I had this tree.

Not much moves me,

but I had to move for the roots.

They were so big.

It burned inside, I know it.

The petrol had to burn the

branches inside,

had to leave scars that

never turn white.

The explosion would have

horrified you,

had you waited to see.

Oil does that—

it explodes.

And then there is nothing left.

Watching

They found it, separately.  Sometimes one at a time, sometimes in small groups.  They instinctively shied away from each other, accepted without argument that certain hallways would remain locked to them.  What did they want to see each other for, anyway?  They didn’t.  They didn’t, and they wouldn’t.

Once they had all arrived and found themselves their own shadowy corners, the teenage boy appeared.  He went to a courtyard in the middle, surrounded on all sides by brick walls with windows that opened from the inside.  On a white sheet spread out on the concrete ground he very deliberately started placing red plastic drinking straws.  No one watched him and he paid attention to no one else.

Over time the straws began to form an intricate pattern.  Those hiding in the brick building did not want to look at it, and when they did, they pretended not to understand.  Was it a formula, they asked?  The kind you needed to be a math genius to understand, perhaps?  They were not math geniuses, so they would never understand it.  Satisfied, they slid away from the windows. 

But the group of pirate boys living in the trees overhead did not leave.  They watched from the tree house they built high in the branches.  They knew what the red straws on the white sheet meant.  They knew it was a key.  A key to a map that would lead everyone in the building to the one place no one wanted to go. 

No one, that is, but them.

Another kind of death

There once was a girl.  The saddest girl in the world, because she kept believing.  She thought she was so clever and strong.  She thought she was different.  She thought all of the red lines would lead to one circle that would form a barrier around her forever.  But the red lines didn’t.  They just lead to more red lines.  She can no longer remember the red line she started from.  When she tries to walk backwards nothing looks familiar—all she can see is what is in front of her.  

The boy laying down the red straws does not help her.  He pays no attention to anything other than the red straws, and to placing them on the large, white sheet spread across the middle of the open market.  No one cares about him being there and he doesn’t care about them.  He does not see the girl standing in the middle of all of the red straws, trying to remember where she came from.  Soon there are so many straws leading in so many different directions that she loses hope.  She does not understand the pattern.  Only the boy does.  But to him it is a math puzzle and you either understand it or you don’t.  He is a sort of genius.  He is the one who keeps us all wandering down different lines, so that we never meet.  

We must never meet.  We must never speak to each other.  The boy’s job is to keep us all walking on the same sheet, but never at the same place together.   We must always remain lost and alone.  It is a math puzzle.  There is a solution but the boy genius will never open his mouth.  He talks with the red straws.  They tell his story for him.  And it is a beautiful story, in its own way.  A beautiful story of loneliness and loss and of being lost until all wandering ends.

Tomorrow and tomorrow

where did I go to

just to be loyal            

to one last deception

cycles of wishing

no chance to be faithful

when I meant to love you       

your god made me leave you

heavy as warheads

this fear almost fatal

here in your believing

triumph is fleeting

from so far away

no tongues left to speak in

so our silence becomes as

cold as the season

each yesterday we kill            

another act of treason

            but could it be             could it be       that she creeps up behind you

            could it be       could it be       that whispers will deny you   

                        no tears and no words             no soul for the selling

                        too much to pay                      to keep her from telling

since pain could not be swayed

a slow train runaway again

            the line for redemption

            from here to forever

and that jail you broke out of

the last portal to heaven

time is a monster                     asleep under the carpet

so easy to trip up on                to cover in never

with purples and yellows                    not just for pictures

but her yesterday sees            

her tomorrow remembers

because your shame hid away

a slow game come to play again

            the mercy you traded

            bursting with color                                                     

and what you thought finished

only just started

                        I could never love you

                        hope made me leave you

                        the damned has its day

                        trust still in the cradle

now here in this leaving

one stopped the bleeding

from a day unintended

night saved for dreaming

where have you gone to

crouched in a circle

you married the flame

this death for your trouble

if only for tomorrow

one last declaration

a lifetime of knowing

I will be faithful

No turning back

            “Olivia is not well enough to leave behind—if she remains here she undoubtedly will be imprisoned, a fate she does not deserve.  We will have to bring her with us,” Philippe shouted to Kitty, over the roar of the car engine.  “You, however, still have the option to remain.  Your mother will be kindly treated by my people.  Should you wish to stay here, our people here will help you to create a new identity and begin a new life.”

“So much for soul mates, then,” she snorted, but Philippe furiously returned, “I would come back for you as soon as possible.  Surely you know that.”

            Kitty shook her head.  “No!  Just  no.  I’m coming with all of you—where to, I have no idea, but I’m coming along, so stop trying to talk me out of it.  I’m not going to let whoever wants to kill me just hunt me down like a dog.  Aunt Jessica should stay, though.”

            “You can’t leave me here!” Aunt Jessica protested.  “How on earth am I supposed to explain everything that happened?  They might even think I did it!”

            “She has a point,” Eric put in.  “It might be better for Olivia as well, to have her sister near.”

            When Aunt Jessica nodded vigorously, Philippe told Jessica, “But you do not understand--if you come with us, you will never be able to return!”

            “Sounds good to me,” Aunt Jessica shouted back.  Philippe turned to Kitty, his expression uncertain.  “You must remain here—that is beyond argument," he said.  "As for your family, this is not a decision I feel qualified to make on their behalf.”

            “Then I’ll make it!” Kitty answered, and floored the gas pedal.