Sometimes
Only lies can be the truth,
And people made of words
More 3-dimensional.
I’m waiting for the plot just like
I’m waiting for the train,
With no knowledge of what’s known
To someone else,
How the fat ex-wife will only sing
When she deems I’ve had enough.
What truths unspool in homage
To the false.
They were all unwept pages
To pry out private tears,
So real tears could be saved
For holidays.
The lines that people
Will never say,
Only real in how it feels,
Are revealed here,
The place we met
A different coast now,
And all the mistakes the unexpected
Painted on the scene
Created not only the actual seeds of tragedy
But an alternate hero’s journey
Where we are written out of each other’s plot
To be freed,
But the worst remains, for the sake of the conveyance,
As if it is all,
The shameful urge,
The unexamined fall …
The tells remain like skulls
Painted with colorful locales,
Dead but ever-present, buried
But without a corpse to exhume.
You’re terrified
To be captured in the prose
And so afraid
You’re not;
How could you know, not seeing
How you’re seen,
Lacking hope
Of being redeemed?
Your words appear
In courtesan’s speech,
From that time you pontificated
On war.
You wanted to be a star, to shine the way
You never did to me,
To find your actions are the plot,
Your self-portrait only background,
And all the things you stole from others
Lost by them, just the same, in the end.
“There were words,” you exclaim,
“That held us together,
How could they go missing?"
When what everyone does
—Love each other—
Didn’t need to be explained.
The heart is a thing
For mathematicians,
Truth and suffering
Mere grist for balancing
The competing claims
Of pro- and anti- agonists.
The heroine’s me, no matter what happens,
The hero is you.
