Lola Ridge treats secrets as if they were small, living intruders in the mind. They infest the speaker’s half-sleep, entering through wounds—perhaps another person’s hidden hurt brushing against her in a crowd, or perhaps caught on her own sharper edges like spiders carried off by a bird at dawn. The speaker feels invaded and uncertain: she cannot tell whether she has absorbed someone else’s pain or created her own hidden burden. The mood is hushed, uneasy, and a little haunted. Secrets run across her soul without sound, too close to see clearly in the dark. At daybreak, when dreams dissolve like breath in frost, she expects to hear them flee barefoot into the shadows. What they leave behind is not peace but evidence of damage—litter and bloody footprints. She knows her secrets not by seeing them directly, but by the wounds and traces they leave on her.
Secrets — Summary
Secrets infesting my half-sleep... did you enter my wound from another wound brushing mine in a crowd... or did I snare you on my sharper edges as a bird flying through cobwebbed trees at sun-up carries off spiders on its wings?
Secrets, running over my soul without sound, only when dawn comes tip-toeing ushered by a suave wind, and dreams disintegrate like breath shapes in frosty air, I shall overhear you, bare-foot, scatting off into the darkness.... I shall know you, secrets by the litter you have left and by your bloody foot-prints.