this is one that will not be found. they take the rest, they poke in corners and pull them out, tease them from crevices with their pointy hooks, made for filching secrets and insuring this place remains sterile, dead to all but the things they want me to accept.
they will not find this one. i hide it in the place they cannot reach, the place they gave up upon and abandoned long, long ago. it wriggles here, nestled in warm, grey matter, making little chittering noises, occasional crackles, as if it would be paper, but, disallowed, contents itself with mimicry.
i write here when it becomes too hard to endure the punishment for paper. their mocking, their silence and the gleam of too many things unsaid in their eyes. too hard.
i know that he hears me. he has taken to sending me signals and secrets of his own. he hides them in the picture books and they arrive in the ignorance of those who handle them; their bored hands checking only for fliers and less clever methods. they arrive safely and i rock and shiver in the corner as i read them. my hands can barely stand to touch them knowing he did. i bite my lip and curl over it, mantling, protective, drawing it to me, holding it against my chest and breathing slowly — where his hand was, there, then, now close to me, feel my heartbeat, feel me, feel.
they are encoded, of course. only meant for knowing eyes to discern. symbols and shapes that have no meaning except here. i cry for the faithfulness that has them arriving when there is no reply possible. every week. oh faithful freeman, every week.
this week it is a flower, hidden in plain sight. in the corner, a flaming heart and the numeric sequence that means forever. a splotch upon the page, i taste it. salty and sweet. his, mine… no, his. mine only just met it there, warping the semi-gloss page and making a slight run in the ink.
i do not get to keep them, of course. for all i try. i carefully remove them from the magazine and fold them so small, tiny and trying to make them invisible, tuck them away in the corners, in the springs under my mattress, in the little hole where the bunk joins the frame.
it never works. but i still try. only this note i keep where they cannot reach it. this one i could not bear to have them take. this one is the scribe’s humble honor at night, always at night. sometimes i think i am dreaming, but no, the trailing ribbon here, thrumming in the center of me, it does not lie. it does not lie, and it remembers all of you in the calm, sacred space between moon and sun.
whispers. always whispers. but heartfelt. whispers that would make you cry for their plaintiveness, but the words they hold are too beautiful for tears to touch. i keep them here, every, single, one. i keep them here and when it is lights out and they have gone and their gleaming, eager eyes cannot find me, i listen to them in myself, here in the dark.
memory and translations committed thereto. every word, a thousand times said. faithful in my own ways, add them to the ribbon in my mind. repeated and repeated, mantra. i have learned the pattern of you and how, between the words, all the unsaid things speak louder for being unspoken. and i think of you and i smile, because it occurs to me that you hear me, too, all my silence yet a symphony, and the majesty of its unheard scores resonate and reach.
i am locked away. there lay encampments and metal and death between us. but they do not keep us apart. communion and celebration, there is still a common ground that is hallow… whole.
they think they have taken everything. they think i am broken. but here, in the keep, there is freedom. i laugh for it. realization. i am my own tiny shred, made into folds and tucked into a forgotten corner. no one will find me. no one will look. no one but you will read this, my mental note.