To, From.

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A secret is a strange thing.

There are three kinds of secrets. One is the sort everyone knows about, the sort you need at least two people for. One to keep it. One to never know. The second is a harder kind of secret: one you keep from yourself. Every day, thousands of confessions are kept from their would-be confessors, none of these people knowing that their never-admitted secrets all boil down to the same three words: I am afraid.

And then there is the third kind of secret, the most hidden kind. A secret no one knows about. Perhaps it was known once, but was taken to the grave. Or maybe it is a useless mystery, arcane and lonely, unfound because no one ever looked for it.

Sometimes, some rare times, a secret stays undiscovered because it is something too big for the mind to hold. It is too strange, too vast, too terrifying to contemplate.

All of us have secrets in our lives. We’re keepers or keptfrom, players or played. Secrets and cockroaches — that’s what will be left at the end of it all.

- Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

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A secret is a strange thing.

There are three kinds of secrets. One is the sort everyone knows about, the sort you need at least two people for. One to keep it. One to never know. The second is a harder kind of secret: one you keep from yourself. Every day, thousands of confessions are kept from their would-be confessors, none of these people knowing that their never-admitted secrets all boil down to the same three words: I am afraid.

And then there is the third kind of secret, the most hidden kind. A secret no one knows about. Perhaps it was known once, but was taken to the grave. Or maybe it is a useless mystery, arcane and lonely, unfound because no one ever looked for it.

Sometimes, some rare times, a secret stays undiscovered because it is something too big for the mind to hold. It is too strange, too vast, too terrifying to contemplate.

All of us have secrets in our lives. We’re keepers or keptfrom, players or played. Secrets and cockroaches — that’s what will be left at the end of it all.

- Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

To your secrets,

I really want to be a farmer but I don’t think my parents would approve

I owe my dad $75 and he forgot about it and I never reminded him

I used to steal things from the scholastic fair

I like writing secret (platonic) love letters and poems to my friends

I’m on the autism spectrum

At my job whenever a fork falls on the floor I just put it back on the table

I have a satin slip hiding in the back of my closet

I'm addicted to watching travel vlogs on youtube

I can’t whistle and at this point I’m too afraid to learn

I owe my dad $75 and he forgot about it and I never reminded him

I stole from a christian offering plate for months on-end

I walk bare feet down my road at 3am often

I’d send my friends anonymous candy grams if they said they didn’t feel good about themselves

I accidentally stole a book from my old school, and then gave it away in a blind book exchange so now its someone elses problem

I'm addicted to watching travel vlogs on youtube

From, these aren't mine.

To the dead,

Content warning: This piece contains descriptions of death and a brief allusion to suicide.

In a small coastal town, population: even less than you think, there was a small house that sat at a dead end belonging to a family who could see the dead. Of course ‘see’ meant exactly that. They could only observe; not communicate nor disturb, just see. However, ‘they’ really meant ‘she’, the family’s last living member. Everyone else had slowly died off, one by one, in awful horrific ways, but much to the town’s dismay, the girl remained perfectly healthy and happy.

consider him like a relative. A brother, one that wouldn’t fall down the stairs and meet his fate, or get lost in a forest and die of dehydration. Everyday was a well-rehearsed routine, the girl with her big signature grin and rumpled hair, and the man with his tired sighs and well-groomed appearance. And it went on. The girl grew to be a young woman, a full sixteen years old, and the man grew into more of a man, an age he refused to tell the girl as he said it wasn’t polite to ask a gentleman his age.

The less-than-you-think amount of people had always been off-put by the lineage of ghost-seers—they figured it was fake; or that it went against God’s word; or that really, it was just plain disturbing. But the goers-against-God still made a living off these followers-of-God visiting them to sort out the business of the dead. Whether it be to know if there was a ghost haunting them, or their newborn baby, or their cat. Though they could not interact with the ghosts, this did not mean they hadn’t small tips and tricks to help rid oneself of a dead friend.

One night, when the girl was nearly almost seventeen (a turn of phrase she used, and a turn of phrase that nearly almost drove the man to insanity), she wandered outside to pick rosemary for her clients the next day. She came back to find the lights turned on in the room where she met her clients, and the shadow of the man and another behind the curtain. She smiled and wandered back in, curious as to why there was a demand for ghost-seers so late at night.

She was hit by the immediate sound of polite laughter as she approached the room, and her smile fell just a bit when she recognized the familiar voice of the old lady who liked to try and make her life miserable at every given chance, not that anyone ever believed the girl when she said anything, though.

So, when almost all the family died except for the youngest girl, the number of off-put less-than-you-think amount of people slowly declined, and the youngest girl began seeing the dead more than the living.

That is, until a man, well known among the less-than-you-think amount of people for being well known among the less-than-you-think amount of people, came to the small, run-down house at the dead end, and asked if they were hiring. The girl, merely thirteen years old at the time, went from looking as though she had witnessed the death of her whole family (which was untrue, she had only witnessed a select few of them), to looking as though she’d won more money than she knew what to do with.

“Really,” came the lady’s voice from inside the parlour, “how do you do it?”
“Now, now…” The man chuckled politely; the girl’s heart squeezed. The man never believed her about the woman either, but she felt at ease with him. He was not the same as her, he was her brother. The girl, however, could not bring herself to stop listening.
“She’s just so… you know. I would have moved out after a day.” The old lady loudly slurped the tea she had been provided and the man sighed.
“To be frank with you, I’d rather not deal with her. But it’s not as bad as you’d think.”

And so the pair lived in harmony; the man slowly bringing in more customers, and the young girl seeing their ghosts. And it went on. The girl grew very fond of the man, and as many without family do, started to

The girl felt as though she was once again witnessing her mother with a noose around her neck. She carefully made her way back outside the house, to the small porch facing the open backyard made of unmowed grass that reached her hips. The man found her there later, after the lady had left and

consider him like a relative. A brother, one that wouldn’t fall down the stairs and meet his fate, or get lost in a forest and die of dehydration. Everyday was a well-rehearsed routine, the girl with her big signature grin and rumpled hair, and the man with his tired sighs and well-groomed appearance. And it went on. The girl grew to be a young woman, a full sixteen years old, and the man grew into more of a man, an age he refused to tell the girl as he said it wasn’t polite to ask a gentleman his age.

One night, when the girl was nearly almost seventeen (a turn of phrase she used, and a turn of phrase that nearly almost drove the man to insanity), she wandered outside to pick rosemary for her clients the next day. She came back to find the lights turned on in the room where she met her clients, and the shadow of the man and another behind the curtain. She smiled and wandered back in, curious as to why there was a demand for ghost-seers so late at night.

She was hit by the immediate sound of polite laughter as she approached the room, and her smile fell just a bit when she recognized the familiar voice of the old lady who liked to try and make her life miserable at every given chance, not that anyone ever believed the girl when she said anything, though.

“Really,” came the lady’s voice from inside the parlour, “how do you do it?”
“Now, now…” The man chuckled politely; the girl’s heart squeezed. The man never believed her about the woman either, but she felt at ease with him. He was not the same as her, he was her brother. The girl, however, could not bring herself to stop listening.
“She’s just so… you know. I would have moved out after a day.” The old lady loudly slurped the tea she had been provided and the man sighed.
“To be frank with you, I’d rather not deal with her. But it’s not as bad as you’d think.”

The girl felt as though she was once again witnessing her mother with a noose around her neck. She carefully made her way back outside the house, to the small porch facing the open backyard made of unmowed grass that reached her hips. The man found her there later, after the lady had left and

spoke quietly.

“I hadn’t heard you come home.”

To the moment between dusk and dawn,

“I think you should leave.” Her voice was the same as it had been the first day he’d arrived at the house; full of an emotion so strong it hurt his throat. The man stared at the girl’s back a while longer, slowly piecing together the puzzle of her dream he had shattered.

“Ah.” His voice was more raw than before. “I’m sorry.”
“No.” She refused to let the tears come. “Only my family has ever been sorry for me.”

The man left in silence, and the girl stared angrily at the ghosts of her mother and father dancing with each other in the tall grass. She saw them together most often under the moonlight.

“Go away,” she whispered, “you’re dead.”

It was too cold to be outside. It had been too cold to be outside for the past two months, yet I’d managed to find myself on the front or back steps every night when it was technically morning. My fingers went stiff and every time someone told me to go in I put them off. “When my phone dies” or “I want to see the stars a few moments longer”. But that night it was because the music playing through my earbuds blocked everything out, and dancing in the backyard until I was no longer numb felt like freedom.

From, the living.