‘keep me a secret’ | narrative poem
♪: comfort chain by instupendo
you were never supposed to stay. i think i knew that from the beginning, even if i pretended otherwise. from the first moment you looked at me—really looked— i knew you were the kind of boy who believes in second chances. i was the kind of girl who never thought she’d survive the first one.
you were quiet in ways that unnerved me. still water. soft answers. eyes that listened even when your mouth didn’t move. you smelled like rain and pencil shavings and the faintest trace of your sister’s shampoo because she hugged you every morning before school. i noticed things like that. i don’t know if you ever noticed what i smelled like. probably smoke. metal. blood in my gums from clenching too hard in my sleep.
you were beautiful. that’s the part i never said out loud. tall in a way that made people look twice. fluffy, dark hair that curled near your ears when it rained. a single mole on your jaw, sharp enough to cut glass, soft enough to draw the eye. girls had crushes on you—real ones, imaginary ones. not just girls our age, either. kids liked you. grandmas flirted with you in grocery store aisles. you were safe, in a way that made people want to be near you. i hated how easy that was for you. how your face belonged in golden lighting, while mine disappeared in corners. sometimes, when we sat together, i imagined how we must’ve looked from far away. i wondered if they assumed you were just being kind, and i was borrowing something that wasn’t mine. sometimes, i believed that too.
i liked how you laughed when you were nervous, like your body hadn’t quite figured out how to carry joy yet. your hoodie sleeves were always frayed at the cuffs from years of being tugged over your hands. your shoes squeaked in hallways and you never seemed to care. you hated confrontation but didn’t avoid it, which somehow made you worse than brave. it made you good. honest in ways i couldn’t touch. and good people don’t survive girls like me. you didn’t know that yet. sometimes, i wanted to teach you.
you were patient. i was loud. you were kindness tucked inside a tired boy’s body, and i was a matchbox with shaking hands. you stood where i left you. when i slammed doors, you waited outside until the lights went out. you let me scream and lie and flinch and freeze—let me say things i didn’t mean and didn’t call me cruel for meaning them anyway. you never asked why. never demanded answers. you just held it. like you were collecting knives just to keep them from cutting me. like you thought if you took enough of it, it’d stop hurting me too. every silence i weaponized, you forgave. every bruise i didn’t explain, you understood. and that’s what made you dangerous to me. because you didn’t just love me. you saw me. and i never wanted to be seen. i didn’t want to be known like that. i wanted to haunt, not be held. i was a secret that should’ve stayed buried.
you’d fold origami cranes out of napkins and leave them on my windowsill when you knew i wasn’t talking to you. you always made sure the wings were even, like that mattered. you labeled your textbooks with tiny doodles and sometimes, for no reason, you’d draw little superhero masks over the people in the yearbook. you never said it, but i knew you wanted to be one. you kept a stash of sour candies in your pencil case and gave me the pink ones without asking, like you’d taken mental inventory of the small things i liked, even when i never said it out loud. once, when i was sick, you left a thermos of soup at my front door with a note that just said ‘eat’. no heart, no name, just eat. i wanted to cry. you never tiptoed around me. you just showed up, like it didn’t matter how many times i tried to push you out. you had this horrible habit of believing the best of people even after they’d proven you wrong, and i couldn’t decide if that made you kind or stupid. maybe both. but it made you real. and i didn’t know how to handle that.
i remember the night behind the school. we lay on the grass. there was dew on the backs of my thighs and dirt beneath my fingernails. the sky looked like it might swallow us. you asked if i ever thought about leaving, really leaving. i said no, but i was lying. you said you’d follow me if i did. that was the first time i felt afraid of you. not because you lie, but because you never did. you were the kind of boy who meant what he said, no matter how impossible, and i was the kind of girl who knew how to turn love into ash.
there’s a version of me that stayed. i see her sometimes. she keeps her hands clean. she speaks softly. she doesn’t hurt anyone. you marry her. she learns how to make rice without burning it. you argue about what shows to watch and fall asleep with the tv still on, your legs tangled. you kiss her every time you leave the room, even if it’s just to get water. she remembers to call back. she smiles in pictures. but that girl isn’t me. that girl doesn’t wake up at three in the morning soaked in red, trying to remember what she did wrong this time. that girl doesn’t check her hands before her memories.
you didn’t ask questions when i showed up like that. blood on my sleeves, eyes vacant, the kind of silence that meant something had already gone too far. you just opened the door and stepped aside. like i was something lost you’d been waiting to return. that was your mistake.
you bought me a necklace the day before i disappeared. red butterfly, thin chain. said it reminded you of me—delicate but still flying. i almost laughed. butterflies don’t get to choose where they land. they’re just pulled by wind and instinct and the need to get somewhere that doesn’t hurt. i never corrected you. i just said thank you. that was my mistake.
in the motel, you fell asleep with your hand half-outstretched between us. like you thought i’d still be there in the morning. i wanted to reach for it. i wanted to believe i could. but wanting isn’t the same as staying. i left before sunrise. wrote a note. folded it into your hoodie pocket so you’d find it when it was already too late. i didn’t sign it. you’d know.
i still see you sometimes. in shadows. in the way a boy fidgets with the sleeve of his hoodie. in someone humming a song that meant nothing until you sang it once under your breath, not knowing i was listening. in train stations, always train stations. coffee shops with fogged-up windows. hospital waiting rooms. you blend into places now. that makes sense. you always belonged to the quiet of things.
i don’t know what your life looks like now. i hope it’s slow. i hope it’s warm. i hope she holds your face when she kisses you. i hope she doesn’t flinch when you touch her. i hope she loves you without fear. i hope she never leaves you in the middle of a fucking train ride, with nothing more than a note in your pocket. and i hope—more than anything—you never look at her the way you looked at me. not like that. not like she’s something to save. like she’s broken but worth the risk. like she’s a fire you think you can run into and put out. because i know that look. it’s the one you gave me every time i tried to ruin you. and it’s the only thing you should’ve kept for yourself.
and still—sometimes, i dream of you. not the version i left. not the boy with someone else’s blood on his hands and sleep still crusted at the corners of his eyes. i dream of the way you smiled when no one was watching. the slope of your shoulders when they weren’t carrying anything. in the dream, we’re running. not away this time—but toward something. a field maybe. the kind that doesn’t end. there’s light behind us, gold and soft, and the sky doesn’t threaten to fall. you’re ahead of me, laughing, hoodie sleeves flapping like wings, and every few seconds, you turn just to make sure i’m still there. i am. and i’m laughing too. my hands are clean. my chest doesn’t burn. we’re running like we’ve always known where we’re going, like it was never in question. and in the dream, you don’t ask what i’ve done. or maybe you do—and stay anyway. but it always ends the same. something shifts. the light bends wrong. you fade before i can catch up. i wake up with your name on my tongue and no voice to say it out loud. i never tell anyone. but i think i’m still running. just not toward anything i get to keep.
i wonder if you dream of me too.
and if you do— let it be soft. let it be small. nothing that lingers. just a flicker—barely a memory. a sound you can’t place. a smell that passes too quickly to name. maybe the feeling of grass beneath your back on a starry night that never made it into a journal, and a girl beside you who almost reached for your hand but didn’t. let it stay blurry. unfinished. let it fade where it lives. don’t turn it into a story, like me. let it rot. don’t make it bigger than it already was. let it go quietly.
because dreams like me don’t survive the morning. and neither did we.