"The Secret Letter"

Among the cobwebbed attic treasures
Memories of yesteryear
Books and pictures, notes well weathered
Some brought laughter, some brought tears

She rummaged through the souvenirs
For hours and hours in reminisce
Childhood friends and high school proms
Her first real date, her first real kiss

Then she stumbled on a box
Of keepsakes from her mother's day
Little secret well-kept treasures
Opened now to light of day

She read the letters from her father
Words of love that brought her tears
She walked back through her mother's youth
Recapturing the long lost years

One more letter left unopened
At the bottom of the box
She sat and stared at it in wonder
Brushing back her golden locks

Dare she read the secret letter
From her mother's unknown youth
This box of treasures kindly quenching
Thirst for knowledge of the truth

She tore the envelope wide open
Pulled the letter from inside
And in the musty attic air
She read it slowly as she cried

It was a letter full of love
Not written in her father's hand
Addressed "Dear Rosebud" at the top
A letter from another man

It told of his undying love
And promised her that he would be
Beside her always in this life
And ever through eternity

The letter was unsigned of course
And barely finished in its haste
The ink was stained with teardrops
Of a love that now had gone to waste

She'd had a vision of her mother
Only seen in photographs
And always looking like an angel
Full of love and joyful laughs

And now the vision had been shattered
Now the truth had been exposed
A letter to a "Rosebud"
And her mother was the lovely rose

She took the letter to her father
And through her tears revealed the truth
Her mother had another love
The mother that she never knew

Her father tearfully then nodded
Trembling as he read the page
He said sometimes the written word
Reveals the truth from age to age

He held her tight and said these words
This secret I already knew
This letter's in your mother's hand
The "Rosebud", darling, it was you.
http://www.silentwords.com/BalladPoems/secretletter.html
This is a Ballad.
by Elizabeth Santos from Pottstown, PA