Secrets

She knows a secret. A secret she never told. And it sits in the back of her mind, in the quiet of her dreams, in the still silence of her heart.

She knows a secret. She knows an awful secret. And she never told him, the boy she loved in her own strange way. On the day that the sun slumpt to earth, gasping in the road, and it's fire pulsed it's last and went out; on that day she learnt the terrible secret. On the day that the world paused, reeling in the enormity of the darkness that sank upon it; she felt the secret dig it's cruel talons into her brain, words she could not unhear concealing themselves in the shadows behind her eyes.

She knows a secret. She knows a secret that must be hidden. As tears flowed and flowed and flowed she tried to forget the tragic truth, the scrap of paper curling in the flames. As the earth staggered she tried not to think it. As reality faltered she tried not to know it.

She knows a secret. A secret she never sought to learn. And she wonders sometimes, in moments of solitude and memory as candlelight flickers across her face, whether in an alternate universe time would have eased the divide that grew between her and the boy who must never know the secret? What would be different if she had never known that the men destroyed the paper and hid the secret on the day the sun fell?