Dream of Secrets
(for Cair)

I line my secrets in a row,
in golden boxes Buddhists use
to hold the ashes of ancestors.

I pour my secrets into a leather pouch.
Relatives sow them on my grave,
and weep when weeds begin to grow.

I pick up secrets like stones
and skip them over waves.
I watch them splash and sink,
but they swim back like fish.

I bring my secrets to you,
laying them on your kitchen table,
little ragged slips I read to you.

Weeping, I tell you everything.
I tell you who and where and when.

When I wake, you’re twirling
in a dress you’ve made of my secrets.

You pull me out to the street
to be with you under the sun,
you, with your proud way of walking,
and everyone praising your dress.

When Halved Hearts Hear

Some say it’s courage
to suffer silently,
to seal your secret deep within.

But in your own deepest dungeon,
hurt goes on, howling.

Under dances, schoolrooms, weddings,
pain pleads for light, crumbs, touch,
steals your sleep, haunts your eyes,
wrenches from your every gesture
harmony, grace, peace,
leaving you unheard, unhealed,
unceasing unto death,

unless one who’s also descended into hell
and knows its harrowing halls,
unlocks, word by word,
unspeakable truths
in a tongue only
halved hearts know.

James Littwin’s work has appeared in Story Quarterly, Dappled Things, Whetstone, St. Anthony Messenger, Friends Journal, Willow Review, The National Catholic Reporter, The Daily Herald, Pomme Journal, Watch My Rising: A Recovery Anthology, Midwest Magazine, Hyphen Magazine, and other publications. He is the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Award for Fiction, a Whetstone Prize for Poetry, and a Ragdale Foundation Fellowship. He lives in Chicago.

Header image by Marilyn Hallett Granzyk