Secrets and Lies

Damn opaqueness and politeness and mess. Damn the heart’s wanton ways. Damn bad timing and impatience. Damn all the ways we hide who we are and how feel and damn how hard it is to want something you shouldn’t want, to be so helplessly imprisoned by complication and impossibility. I wish loyalties never got crossed. I wish time weren’t so linear and I could see something heartening waiting for me in the future instead of being held captive in the static present. But mostly I wish the truth weren’t so hard to tell. Everyone fears knowing what is real because ignorance is possibility. If I don’t know how he feels he might love me. And sometimes things are best left unsaid because then there is no responsibility, no wounded feelings, no blame if you change your mind, no rejection. It’s safe and it’s suffocating. How I hate the veiled, festering feelings that will never be more than phantoms. If only we had the courage to give and receive everything hidden in our hearts. It might be shocking, devastating even, but think of all the affection wasted, all the bitterness never remedied, all the knotty, heavy secrets that lie between everyone. Lying about how much we care. Watching in silent agony as someone we want falls for a friend. Feigning forgiveness while harboring deep, poisonous anger. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a fairy godmother who could say what no one else dares to? Or a day when no one could lie? Or mind-reading capabilities?