If there is one thing I’ve learned in the past year, it’s that keeping secrets from your loved ones is just about the most poisonous thing you can do. It doesn’t matter if it concerns them or not…no matter how little and insignificant they seem, or how little they mean to anybody else, if you feel as though you are actively keeping a secret, that does you no good. Or at least that was true of me. If anybody else knows the feeling I’m talking about, you might appreciate this poem. I wrote it a long time ago for Compassio, but only just started taking its advice in the past few months.

Selling Secrets

I will sell you my secrets,

If you will promise to keep them

Like collectables on a shelf

Bottled up and boxed away,

Away from me and myself.

With shiny coins and crisp bills,

I will pay you for the privilege

Of dropping each dark token

Like heavy marbles to the ground.

They will be yours, they will be unbroken.

Let me whisper in your ear

What no man is meant to hear.

My breath will be the jumet

For such weighty secrets

That they will surely numb it.

Take away my troubles,

Make light my heavy burdens,

If secrets steady my beating heart,

Then teach me to forget

And stop before I tear myself apart.