Secrets

She is still sitting. And watching. The lights outside flicker. Shadows are thrown against the cars and the trees. The shadows twist and curl to fit. They shift shapes occasionally, as if to hide a secret.

We all have secrets. Secrets we have to bear on our own. Secrets we have to keep within. Like Pandora's box, we hide it to save the world. Or we hide it to save ourselves, to preserve what we are. The lies, the deceptions, the truths so ingrained in lies, no one knows, or can detangle the two anymore.

She shakes her head. Wisps of hair fall naturally around her head. She tucks a runaway lock behind her ear. The contact the tip of her finger makes with her ear sends a jolt of awareness through her.

She is alive. She feels dead. In an unpredictable world, where luck seems to flutter and throw careless gifts at the feet of random people, she is alive. She feels her chest and is awed by the sound and feel of her beating heart. Thump, thump, it goes faster, like a secret desperately wanting to escape. She presses harder, as if she could draw more life out of herself that way.

Thump, thump, thump.

The rhythm eases her. Relaxes her. It should not. She opens her eyes, unaware of the fact that they were closed. Secrets want to come out. She places her other hand upon the other, it seems clasped in a secret prayer.

Help me be still. Help me be numb. Help me be silent. Help me, to not be me.

She is alive. She still feels dead. Secrets bursting to rip out from in her. Pandora opened what was not hers to share. Through deception and lies, did the box become Pandora’s. When her secrets are torn from her, so will she belong to someone else. The lights start to flicker once more and the shadows begin again, their secret dance, hiding their secret treasures from the world.