“Tell me a secret,” she whispered.

They lay in the dark, side by side. The rumpled sheets smelled faintly of must. She turned to him again, wrapping one leg across his body, her skin cool against his, and checked that he was awake.

He was. His eyes, open, reflected the light that slipped through the open window.

“Tell me a secret,” she asked again, seeking, in her way, to reach a new depth of intimacy. She wanted to learn to know him—the thoughts that hummed in the quiet before sleep; truths unspoken, unheard that breathed possibilities into the dark—but she didn’t have the words to say so.

Instead, she asked for secrets, for what are unsung words if not that?

A long pause followed, in which she became certain that he would answer. But when finally he spoke it was only to say, “I don’t have any.”

The four words of his refusal scattered, their place quickly taken by new silence. He closed his eyes, and the light outside the window dimmed without its reflection.

She didn’t believe him then. Her own secrets swirled within her—thoughts and words pulling at the curtains of obscurity. Her imagination hurried to fill the gaps in that stunted exchange, supplying a hundred—a thousand—likely responses.

What was a secret?

A secret was anything yet unknown. Everything yet to be shared. Memories, regrets, ambitions, desires—a secret was the tightly coiled strands of another’s spirit, and this time she wanted to hear the melody that escaped when it touched air.

They drifted into dreams, eventually, and maybe they told one another secrets in their sleep. She awoke none the wiser for it, and though she would ask many more times, he would always pause a long while before answering, “I don’t have any.”

Months later, or maybe it was years, she found herself standing at the edge of a vast ocean, bathed in moonlight, rocked by the rhythm of waves and the erratic heave of uncertainty. As she watched the darkness shift and roll, she remembered that other, long ago night, and the request she had made.

“Tell me a secret,” she whispered to the colossus of mysteries stretched before her.

She dove beneath the noise and slid through the slippery fingers of currents. The thick roar and wet of the sea soaked her hair and dripped from her nose and eyes when she surfaced.

“I don’t have any,” chanted the surf and the stars and the black night sky, and she believed them.

The entire ocean was there—clinging to her hair, flowing around her, churning within her—and it had no secrets. Creatures unseen and undreamed-of lingered in the shadows, but the path toward them was unobstructed.

The darkness was a heavy blanket thrown across the landscape, but she saw that it, too, had no secrets. Dreams blazed in the sky; a thousand—a million—sparkling riddles offered themselves freely to her interpretation.

The night was not full of secrets, only revelations that her ill-adjusted eyes could not discern.

And so it was, she realized, with that other, smaller yet equally vast and enigmatic being. Thoughts unseen and unheard hid in his shadows, but the way to them was open if she dared to dive so deep. Dreams burned in the warmth of his skin—a million messages to read.

He had no secrets, only words she could not yet understand.

She lay back and let the ocean carry her for a while, honest in its inscrutability. The wind whistled, and a question rippled across the surface of the water: “Tell us a secret.”

She felt the words that swirled within her—the undreamed words; the unsung words; the words pulling at her tongue to escape—settle and still.

She smiled as the realization sank in, and she answered, “I don’t have any.”

Relephant Read:

5 Secrets You Should Finally Tell the Man (or Woman) You Love.

Author: Toby Israel

Editor: Ashleigh Hitchcock

Photo: Pixabay