I’ll Always Keep Our Secrets

When I loved you, I kept a journal.
And in this journal are the stories of us.

Each page tells where we have been, where our lonely hearts have wandered, how they stumbled and bumped into each other in this adventure of love.

The first pages tell of my mind, spinning over the thought of you, asking myself if it was all real, if this was how it felt to learn the path of another person’s soul, to tread carefully, to hold tightly to someone’s hand and let them in.

The first pages are the honest letters I never sent, each a sliver of my heart, each pouring out my emotion and fears as I discovered how to let go, how to free fall.

Then fly.

The middle pages are my confessions as our hearts wrapped themselves around each other, as our fingers intertwined, as everything we knew about ourselves changed, blossomed, shifted, became something beautiful.

Each page is my handwriting, scribbled and scrawled, like thin trees bending with the weight of the wind, rushing across the paper as my hand tried to catch up with my head.

Each page speaks truths that ache as I reread them. Truths that take my breath away with their honesty and clarity, with their perfect descriptions of what it means to be in love.

Even the end pages, the last pages as we dwindled and drifted, as we said our goodbyes—these pages speak with honesty, too. They confess my broken heart, our shifted minds, the way life continues despite the diversion from its original path.

The last pages are the hardest to read.

I take in each word, each letter so poised in-between its line, trying to stand up straight, trying to pretend that this rigid font is a declaration of an unbroken heart. But I know better. And I knew better.

Even then I knew that proper handwriting would not disguise the ache of change.

But this journal, it’s every page—it’s beautiful. This journal is our journey, the ups and downs, the rush of emotion and the slow descend. It is the days of us, the promises we made, the dreams of our hearts, the forevers our bodies whispered to one another.

This journal tells it, candid and unafraid.

And no matter where our story ends, or even if it has already, this journal holds our secrets. And I promise to keep them, promise to carry them with me, guarded and safe.