This is from a short poem which is from a verbatim conversation with a short person. (I just figured it out — Randy Newman’s "Short People" is about kids.) I expanded the conversation into a story of the secret: the girl who lives in a world of her own and the man who threatens it.

The cellphone half of the story I wrote on the ferry heading home from The Gas Station recording studio on Toronto Island one day. I got on my bike and recited what I had written to Dale’s answering machine as I headed east along Queen’s Quay. Dale did a cool job on this one.

I have a secret.
Tell me.
No.
Please tell me.
No. Put it out of your mind.
Please? If I put it out of my mind, then will you tell me?

She was always like that, even as a kid, secret and apologetic,
quiet like a deer moving between the sunshine and uncertainty

He yells at her up until she goes pale then resumes his job as a painter,
painting all the fire hydrants yellow within a certain framework

And she wouldn't always feel so good, all the time, but over the the course
of the day she'd forget, the dancer in her run amok, she'd forget
and from the forest edge, he'd come

Returning home's not to be construed as anything resembling a tender mood
stay in my orbit though it's lacking certain latitude

But then it goes late; the been, are, going of another day is bobbled and
caught and she says nice things to go to sleep like Charles Comfort and
Mimico Creek

The nocturnal shh of the saboteur whispering, 'there's nothing counterfeit
about the summer'- it took big waves of discipline to learn they pump the
birdsong in

She was always like that and like now, watching the swallows gobble
tonight's complement of blood-suckers, thank Christ, she's trying to be
silent when catching a bug in mid-flight might be easier

I have a secret.
Tell me.
No.
Please tell me.
No. Put it out of your mind
Please? If I put it out of my mind, then will you tell me?