Lights On

Break or seize me 

If the flame gets blown out in the shine 

I will know that you can not be mine 

Live or leave me

Let me tell you all my secrets in a whisper till the day is done.

I sit on the carpeted floor with a half-drunken bottle of Abita Purple Haze as they talk. She's opening a second bottle of champagne and asking S about his plans to propose to his girlfriend. I watch as the liquid lurches as she fumbles in refilling her glass--a telltale sign of her inebriated state. E is playing with the French bulldog, while C helps himself to another slice of king cake (in celebration of the beginning of Mardi Gras festivities in the city). S talks of diamonds and engagements, and I ask how he and his girlfriend met.

Later, I wonder if she would have told us everything if she had been sober. Maybe she wouldn't have told us that she thinks her boyfriend in California is about to dump her. Maybe she wouldn't have said all those other things about her past. Or maybe she would have anyways.

We are a strange group of six. Four boys, two girls. Under any other circumstances, we would have never all become friends. We are essentially your standard dysfunctional yet loveable sitcom cast. But here we are on a Friday night, with a neglected game of Cards Against Humanity splayed out on the coffee table amongst drained glasses of Bellini. They flip their secrets face-up one by one, but I have yet to play my hand.

I can tell you a little something scandalous about each of them, but they have nothing on me. Not because I don't trust them. But because my lack of secrets is the greatest secret of all.

I still remember what she said to me just last Monday, about a girl she knows from back home who is 24, engaged, and still a virgin--exclaiming this to me as if it were the most absurd thing she'd ever heard in her life. Then, there's the last time we played Never Have I Ever at the sushi happy hour at Vitascope, and I sat out because I knew that even more than any of the dirty secrets they each aired that night, the biggest shocker to them would be mine.

I hide this from them, not because I am ashamed, but because I don't want a reaction. I don't need your pity or your incredulity or heaven forbid your approval (and I have dealt with all these before). If they ask me directly one day, I will tell them. But for now, let them speculate of unspeakable sorrows, dark and tragic pasts, or raw heartbreak if they deign to notice that I do not speak--when in fact, the sheep in wolf's clothing is as pure as the driven snow.

Break or seize me 

Let the things that I tell you survive

In the way that you handle your size 

Live or leave me

--"Lights On" by FKA Twigs