She Hid, poetry by Cailey Tarriane at Spillwords.com

She Hid

(Like Father, Like Daughter)

written by: Cailey Tarriane

@caileytarriane

Whenever people claimed to dislike her, she hid her true feelings-
which was pleasure and delight.

Whenever Halloween was around the corner, she hid that she cared,
she hid away every October as she searched tirelessly at her late father’s

three-story mansion, quiet and still, but won’t be left alone by jeering youngsters
whom she chased away without running, scared away without becoming scarier.

This mansion, with grills by its windows where shattered glass stayed
where it was, broken but too frightened to break, with many corridors

that led to different rooms, with what seemed like a gray cloud watching over.
Darkness expanded by following her steps while shadowing the places she had stepped on,

with bats screaming from a distance and the scent of a mystery behind someone’s
past, threatening to be unraveled with its consequences.

She hid her genuine reaction to all this behind sunglasses with a dark tint,
and that reaction was none other than thrill and excitement. Every. Halloween.

She destroyed rotting drawers and pulled out the best, most colorful flowers
as disappointment caused her to jump every so often as that feeling came and went.

A thorough search for the Left Behind of a close member in her life
led to having dinner while she inspected the chandelier for secrets.

The lights didn’t flicker and the napkin she wiped her lips with
didn’t hide any twitching of the face or quivering of the mouth.

She searched all over the mansion until suddenly her decision was final,
and that decision was to never come back, for the chandelier had a light

that was too bright for her to handle in that lifetime, the mansion too dark
for her to keep memories that were once treasures of her own.

When winter came, the house was left by itself, and if anyone could continue
exploring the secrets her father hid and left behind, whether

those people found more or nothing, there was no discovery to cherish-
only someone else’s past.

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Cailey Tarriane

Cailey Tarriane is an avid writer and poet with short works published in Spillwords Press, Green Ink Poetry, Birdhouse Lit, and Scribes Micro Fiction, among others. She has written over five novels and can be found frequently scribbling about her beloved pets.

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