secret reader
the best cereals came in bowls shaped like fat little steamer boats - weathered and worn from floating in sinks and being banged on countertops in the morning rush - deep enough to keep in all the blue red orange green floating O's - and pictures painted along the inside like secrets impatiently waiting to be uncovered and told. sometimes on days before laundry sundays, they got straws and made milky bubbles letting secrets explode like little parties.
the simple way their conversations flow reminded her of those days before they were 5' tall and lived in houses with dishwashers that slaughtered cereal bowls. it was when secrets made them giggle and craft mischievous tricks beneath sofa-pillow forts. more often than not their secrets weren't really secrets but new discoveries paving the way for age 4.
it was somewhere after he died and she moved once more and once more and once more, somewhere after she found his collection of broken watches scattered across the floor, somewhere after she was forced into adulthood by strange mustached men, somewhere after she had walked hours along the same roads as he and found holes in the soles of her soul, it was somewhere around then that she learned she had grown up secrets. her own. his. theirs.
or maybe it was, more accurately, because he died that she learned to read secrets. she learned to know the way they grow up and become wrinkles writing maps about the places we've gone. where we have had to go. they mark the inflections of our voice and the degree to which we lean left. or right. they slip sweeter words into our lies or meaner ones into the truth. they have regularity and rhythm to their movement so that if you listen carefully to the beat beneath the track you'll find them dragging at exactly 1/8th of a note off.
she searched for those rhythms until she found ones she could read, refocusing all energy on discovering his story in that lagging 1/8th of a beat. this is why she listens. because this is what she knows.
she knows things he has told her because they slipped out accidentally. she knows things they've told her because they were being gossipy. she knows things she was never supposed to and things he doesn't even know yet. but he will eventually. he'll know. and then he won't be because when some tracks overlap you have to kill the beat. this is the burden of bearing secrets. and so she squirms uncomfortably listening to the impending collision of 1/8ths of beats.
no. not all secrets are milk bubbles, exploding happy.
the simple way their conversations flow reminded her of those days before they were 5' tall and lived in houses with dishwashers that slaughtered cereal bowls. it was when secrets made them giggle and craft mischievous tricks beneath sofa-pillow forts. more often than not their secrets weren't really secrets but new discoveries paving the way for age 4.
it was somewhere after he died and she moved once more and once more and once more, somewhere after she found his collection of broken watches scattered across the floor, somewhere after she was forced into adulthood by strange mustached men, somewhere after she had walked hours along the same roads as he and found holes in the soles of her soul, it was somewhere around then that she learned she had grown up secrets. her own. his. theirs.
or maybe it was, more accurately, because he died that she learned to read secrets. she learned to know the way they grow up and become wrinkles writing maps about the places we've gone. where we have had to go. they mark the inflections of our voice and the degree to which we lean left. or right. they slip sweeter words into our lies or meaner ones into the truth. they have regularity and rhythm to their movement so that if you listen carefully to the beat beneath the track you'll find them dragging at exactly 1/8th of a note off.
she searched for those rhythms until she found ones she could read, refocusing all energy on discovering his story in that lagging 1/8th of a beat. this is why she listens. because this is what she knows.
she knows things he has told her because they slipped out accidentally. she knows things they've told her because they were being gossipy. she knows things she was never supposed to and things he doesn't even know yet. but he will eventually. he'll know. and then he won't be because when some tracks overlap you have to kill the beat. this is the burden of bearing secrets. and so she squirms uncomfortably listening to the impending collision of 1/8ths of beats.
no. not all secrets are milk bubbles, exploding happy.