What feelings does this word evoke? What sorts of memories does it recall? Which of your senses start to tingle? How would you represent what this word means to you?
See also: sacred.
I know two sorts of secrets: the ones that can’t be let out because they’re too sad and scary; and the ones that aren’t yet grown up enough to go out on their own, but which are going to be beautiful and joyful.
I let go of most of my secrets. Some of them weren’t even mine; I was carrying them around because I thought I had to. I handed the worst one back. Some of them stopped being true. Some of them I told, and they turned out to have never been true – particularly the one that went nobody must know what a social failure and weirdo I am.
I have one secret left. It is the good and joyful sort, and it’s not really a secret, because there are some people who know what it really is. For everyone else: I’m organising a cultural exchange programme for mermaids. It has been tremendous fun and incredibly hard work. Sometimes the mermaids have co-operated; sometimes they have hidden behind rocks and sulked for weeks on end. I have come to understand how different breathing air is from breathing water. Very often I worry that whether the host families on the surface won’t appreciate my efforts at all. At the moment I am trying to find the password that will let the mermaids move from sea to air. That’s a secret. I’m going to find it, though.
Kathleen Jowitt 