I Know Where You Live

by Gregg Olsen

Roses are pretty and smell good, but those thorns . . . Sometimes you don’t even see them when you bury your face in a bouquet of heaven, pulling yourself inside, deeper. Then you bleed.

Scraping away the dirt from a secret doesn’t always set you free. Sometimes it’s the very opposite.

I’m no longer crying. I slap on a smile. It’s something I’ve done my entire life. I don’t like my face to be a mirror for others to mimic with false concern.

Telling your truth might feel good; finally letting go of something dark often is. That’s why counselors are in business. That’s why confiding to a perfect stranger next to you on an airplane sometimes does the trick. The flip side is that sometimes when you release a dark secret, it comes back, a boomerang trimmed in razor blades.