Keeping Secrets And Continuing To Love Poem by RIC BASTASA

i keep the secrets. They are meant to be kept,
like moles inside our thighs
those that stain our bellies but
they are those, these secrets,
that make us alive. You will never know them.
They are secrets and they are meant to be kept.
Like treasures. They glow before my eyes,
when you are not around, as i open my chest
and one by one i touch them
account for them and kiss them with my lips.

These secrets. These make me alive.
For the coming years. When i am with you.
You will never know them.
They feed on me and I feed on them.
Everyday. Every moment, when i am about
to die and surrender to the ghosts of my
emptiness.

I will let you go for a while. I tenderly sleep
with my secrets in bed. I cup them with my hands
like water to my mouth. I hug them with my arms.
I lay my heavy legs on them. They make me alive.

Even without you. I put them back on my chest.
Inside the fifth chamber of my heart.
Inside the tiniest neuron of my brain.

Inflatable. Indestructible. These secrets.
These are the ingredients of my life.
When you will know them, if you insist,
and really insist, and i advise you to
please do not persist, when you know them

at first glance, like Medusa's glance,
when you look at them and understand

you will turn to stone. And i too will
turn into a serpent, now, Medusa's slave.

Unravel them not, therefore. We must live.
This normal life. Pretenses and Defences.
Walls and Fortresses. Love and Secrets.

Understand them not. As I too must.