Secret Messages

We wrote them in lemon juice

on white paper.

The juice faded quickly

to invisible. We children knew —

When you received

a blank sheet of paper,

it was a secret message

from one of the gang.

To read it, you had to

iron it — yes, like laundry.

The heat made the letters appear,

turning them rusty brown.

But it all depended on

having a wooden pen

with a steel nib — as we did —

to dip in the lemon juice.

What do kids do now

when pens like that

are never seen?

Now they use computers.

Now, to make 

a secret message,

hit ‘Select All’

and turn the text white.

The person on the other end

has to know. They re-select, 

turn it back to black,

read it. Perhaps reply.

But that’s the problem

with secret messages.

Sooner or later you do have to

read them. And if you can ...

In my day you burnt the paper, 

or chewed it up in little bits 

and swallowed it. You can't do 
things like that to a computer. 

Poetic Asides November Poem A Day Chapbook Challenge: day 21, Secret messages, second attempt.