He was digging deep into my back yard pages
using questions for a spade;
the over-turned soil started to pile high
deep dead flowers unearthed there
and who, and what phrases came from him in clumps
of queries
and gripped I was with how much

I can, could or should reveal.

"Was he your boyfriend.? How long were you two together?"

These kinds of soft queries come with hidden barbs and sharp edges
if the answers lead on to more spade queries and deeper digging into my
backyard history.

Each clunk! into that deep soil just might dig up memories long buried there with no time for censorship to dust off the dirt and clean them up and evaluate what he had found there.

I was not trying to hide but I was frozen by not being able to see in advance what lay there before I was presented with it and hesitant, had to instantly think about what to own and what to conceal.

How many backyard artifacts should each of us reveal to New Love who has no context to understand and thereby forces you to own or conceal.

I took each shovelful he presented me and simply smiled mysteriously saying "Your questions bring up so many memories and I can't decide right now which to reveal and which to leave unsaid until I know how you deal with backyard memories; and that might take time, lots of time, for me to see, or guess why and what, you think this ecavation means.