Swear You Won't Tell! Mar. 13, 2025

Not your partner or family or closest friend

we add those words to secrets

don’t we, for an extra airtight seal

for a looming surprise to be revealed

in a proclamation, followed by

claps, slaps and smiley hugs

but it’s the much darker confidence

laid in the graveyard of two minds

buried deep without headstone

that we fear one day

will crawl out of the muck and

through the lips of one of them

in an unguarded moment

the secret will seek liberation

like all thoughts

and a skeleton will leap

into the land of the living