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On Secrets 

              A found poem from Mary Ruefle’s essay of the same name 

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Overhearing the world that neither 

hides itself 

              nor reveals itself, 

I listened carefully. I could hear 

              singing –

 

The theory behind intimate conversations 

is that we may lose our life. 

Samson loses his hair. 

Faust loses his soul 

                           but gains knowledge. 

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Death and destruction or 

self-discovery. 

              Curse or incantation. 

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Folded into notes, the kind you 

used to pass in high school, 

fragments of the prohibited. 

I hid my love because 

religious morality is dependent on 

              consequence.

 

I was sunk in a desire to observe 

                            the stars, to be held. 

              Embraced privately. 

Just as the astronomer considers 

the universe in his mind.

 

Repressed, then expressed, 

I knew exactly what I wanted 

and where I wanted it – 

a state of reverberation. 

              To be changed. 

                            Unburdened.

 

I hesitated 

              in secret, said nothing. 

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Sarah Peecher is a poet living and working in Chicago. She is a second-year Creative Writing MFA student at Columbia College Chicago and a Nathan Breitling Poetry Fellow. Her recent work appears or is forthcoming in Allium, Bluestem, Blood Tree Literature and FERAL. She also teaches undergraduate writing at Columbia College Chicago.

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