My Secret Box Poem by Lone Dog

(Dedicated to my friend Carlos Velasquez who shared many of his secrets with me)

There's a wooden box that I buried deep
Where a rocky trail still winds.
And the secrets held within that box
No one else shall ever find.

Encased within a concrete tomb,
It's safe from prying hands,
And only I know where it is
In my raped and ravaged land.

It holds my youth, my joys, my tears,
In pictures I amassed.
And notes within a hidden book
Reveal my troubled past.

I felt that when I fled my land
I must leave something there -
Some part of me - for I would not
Again inhale its air.

And so I left my secret box
In a land diseased by war.
A land to which I'll ne'er return;
My home, El Salvador.