I want to keep you a secret for as long as I can.

I don’t want to tell my friends why I’m joyously smiling for no reason while we’re having dinner. I don’t want to tell them about our late night conversations or our flirty texts, I don’t want to tell them about our goofy pictures or our inside jokes.

I don’t want to tell them that I’m slowly falling in love with you.

I don’t want to tell them because they will ask too many questions and give me so many contradicting opinions that will make me question you.

And for once, I don’t want to question anyone, I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, I want to believe that your words are not lies and that you want to know more about me just like I want to know more about you.

I want us to know each other first before we let the world know about us.

Because as much as I want to show you off to the world, I have noticed lately, that the world has a way of taking beautiful things and turning them ugly or snatching what we love from us, and I’m not ready for the world to snatch you from me.  

I want to keep you a secret because secrets are precious, secrets are treasured and secrets are locked safely within the arms of those who will not give them away.

Secrets hold parts of us that we can’t get back, they carry intimate stories about who we are, they represent a deeper or softer side in us that we don’t want anyone to see and they can sometimes change our lives.

And I want you to change my life. I want you to hold the parts of me that are inconsolable, I want you to carry some of my darkest stories with me and burn them to ashes, I want you to see my deepest and softest side and I want to do the same for you.

I want to be your secret too.

Because all I know is that nowadays the truth is made up of a bunch of lies and no one means what they say anymore.

Nowadays, the truth is only suitable when it’s fabricated.

So maybe this time we should keep the truth a secret and tell the world our lies.

Maybe this time, we shouldn’t give away our secrets to anyone but ourselves.

Maybe this time, we could hide our secrets from the world and only share them with each other.  

Rania Naim is a poet and author of the new book All The Words I Should Have Said, available here.