The best kinds of promises are the ones we make in secret. The ones that go right to the core, for which there are no words. What's inside never makes it out, a blackhole in the middle of the universe is a negative affirmation. The light goes in but never comes out except in another form. The radiation leaks, invisible and oh so quiet. 

The best kinds of promises are the ones that blanket everything we are or were or hope to be. Even when we don't keep them we know they're there, and they fill up our tomorrows. They write in the gaps we leave in our wake and make memory into something more than a record. They cover up our secrets and cling to time. 

A promise to yourself is a state without beginning or end. They make our books balance because in the end they're something to believe in. They work like magic but better than a dream. So much more concrete than something smaller. Less likely to fade as quickly as a dream or an ambition. 

If you say I hope to be something more than that which I am you can hear them scoff already but a promise, ah, a promise is that much more solemn. So that even the most flippant promise is tossed down as a full house. 

If there's such a thing as keeping score then forget about your wishes, forget about the daily tumble of words that add up to  - zip, zoom, bang down on us as the sun sets. 

I only want to remember my promises because it is the thought that counts, because anything else is that much more likely to topple my house of cards. It is not enough for me to simply want, and in the act of it we forget so many of our reasons, so much about the paths less well travelled. If I find myself not doing all the things that I should have, could have, would have then let it at least be said that I screamed from the rooftops all those things I left behind.

So give me a promise not kept or untold anyday over a jumble of limp, wet hope in triffling words. If I'm going to jump let it be from the highest point I can find.  Then at least inside I will know that all my promises do add up to something, even if it's not what I'd intended. 

Nobody knows when it's made where a promise might lead but I'm willing to take the good with the bad in order that today might feed off the flux that is I and perhaps, one day a shift will come. A promise leaves room for the dynamic.