Under

You asked and I couldn't lie anymore.

The dust came up with it when I pulled,

a small cloud of everything I'd forgotten

about why I put it there in the first place.

I don't need to say what it was.

You already knew I was keeping something.

The shame wasn't in the object itself—

it was in the dark, in the reaching,

in the proof that I could love someone

and still choose the lie.

You didn't ask me to explain.

That might have been worse.