Secrets

I told my secrets down a well.
The words fell, diluted
and strange
by the dank water that soaked
moss into sponge.
Down, they
tumbled, disappearing, to lonely safety.
The rope ran through my fingers,
lowering the tales,
burning my skin,
lowering them down
into deep,
green,
echoed space.
The words dropped with the pail;
it clunked and rang
and I walked away without a care,
breathing the freedom in
and blowing it out into the cold dark air.
I wrote my secrets down on paper.
The pen scratched as fire tore my heart,
emptying my conscience
as the light dipped,
and fluttered and fell.
I folded the paper to a tiny square,
six times for each regret,
the seams and creases set in stone
the ink smudged scores
of lay line-fingerprints,
the paper's edges frayed in the
damp palm of my hand.
I wedged it underneath a table leg,
pushing the catharsis
deep and hardened,
under wood, my fable,
and took my seat
at some other table.
I scored my secrets in the sand
With care I dragged those letters out.
Past seaweed
and salted rocks,
over cockleshells
and broken bone,
There was string
and tin
and a rusted key
that peppered my lines of woe.
The words ran deep
and made themselves up
of hundreds of years worth of stones,
each so weathered,
each so small they could balance
on an eyelash.
I waited for the tide to come,
but the sea couldn't reach what I had done;
my misjudged moon tide
left my secrets ingrained and bared
still as newborn
as they day they were made.
The tales made their way back to me,
even though sodden in the well,
even though breathed out into the air,
even though udner their wood protector;
I found my table, without its lilt,
and unplugged my folded words of guilt,
the only method now for concealing
was to strike a match
and drag its black-headed carbon fate
over those secrets
until they were nothing but a pile of
sorry and forgotten ash, buried deep in the earth.
The well is empty;
the table now rocks;
the sea knows not of my secrets now.