Coded promises
That’s right, that’s right, that’s you. You come along here, bold and brazen as you like, and you smash glasses, crockery, fingers and thumbs, sticks and stones against the rocks, you break my bones because names will never hurt me, and then you lean forward. Conspiratorially. Warily. Carefully. Cast your eyes into my skull and out through the back of my head, so to make doubly certain that nobody’s observing us from a distance. Now. Say it. Say the words that are choking you, making you gasp even for the most fetid air, yellowing you with the sickly fumes, ageing you before my very eyes. Unleash to live, so that you can breathe another day. One word is all it takes.
Your secret’s safe with me, I promise.
That’s right, that’s right, that’s you. You’ve told me everything. Now you evaporate. Gone. Faded into the earth, into the background. You leave me with handfuls of rusted chains, their bonds broken from where you gnawed through them in your sudden desperate need to vanish beyond belief, beyond remembrance. Your echoes are the sounds of static, hiss and electronic burble nagging at the sensitive extremes of my hearing, needling the red before sweeping back the dial and finding silence. This isn’t music, this is noise. This isn’t screaming, this is laughter. This isn’t biting, this is cannibalism from the inside out - heart first, lungs later, fingernails for dessert. Two words are all it takes.
Your secret’s safe with me, I promise.
That’s right, that’s right, that’s you. Your syrupy platitudes and oft-repeated phrases now merely make me nauseous, where once they burnished my soul into a new-found lustre. Your photo booth snapshot, wide-eyed, sends me sickened and cold. All I want is to send you to bed without any supper, pull the covers over your head and press the pillow over your face. Down and out and goose-feathered. Don’t put songs in my heart, don’t put words in my head, don’t put movement in my muscles. Don’t do anything to me or for me or because of me. Don’t live and breathe. Don’t exist in your own time, under your own skies. But whatever you do, don’t just disappear. Three words are all it takes.
Your secret’s safe with me, I promise.
That’s right, that’s right, that’s you. I’ve got no hold, no claim, no dreamlike obsessions. Hard-faced with a stony heart, hot-headed with a burning brow, and with a reflection that continues to blur a little more in the mirror every morning. That’s me written through and through, like so much tooth-decaying sickly seaside rock. Do I taste good? Do you approve of my artifice? Will you finish me off this time? Oh, I forget. You’ve sworn off sweet foods in case they ruin your appetite. Very wise, that. Take some of me with you, then. Slip me into your pocket as a simple keepsake to remember me by. You’re fading. Last chance? Can I coax you? Four words are all it takes.
Your secret’s safe with me, I promise.