Aby Lanner

I catalogue things for a living — deeds, letters, the paperwork of other people's lives, the kind that outlives the people who wrote it. That is my day work. This is what happens after hours.

Some years ago, someone told me something they could not carry, and asked me to carry it instead. I did. I kept it so long, so carefully, that I stopped being able to tell where the secret ended and I began. It sat inside me like a file with no folder — undated, unfiled, load-bearing.

I am telling you this because I think you might be carrying something of your own the same way. Something folded so small it fits in your chest and doesn't show. I am not going to ask you to unfold it in public. I am asking you to hand it to me instead.

This is not a confession booth. I am not a priest, a therapist, or an algorithm. I am one woman who happens to be very good at keeping things, and who has decided to put that skill to use for strangers.

I read what you send me. Every page. I do not know your name unless you choose to give me one to hold — and even then, I hold it separately from what you've told me, the way an archivist keeps a donor's identity apart from a sealed collection.

Somewhere on this site is a face that resembles mine. It is not a photograph. I am careful about what I let out into the world — you will understand that, I think, better than most people would.

She doesn't just tell stories. She keeps them — yours, hers, theirs — in the fold of her silence.

What you leave here stays here. What you say to me stays with me. That is the only promise I make, and it is absolute.

I do not thank people for arriving. I expected them.

There is no deadline on a secret.