I learned to Lie

I remember getting braces

in 4^th grade,

cold winter with the trappings

of many a grey sky,

the dentist,

big white coat,

big white coat,

asks if he’s hurting me

and with tears

streaming down my face

I say,

“no, Im fine.”

The little girl in me

with her pigtails

bouncing through the snow

still lies I suppose

to appease

a room,

a boy,

a girl,

a piece of furniture that

you lost your virginity on,

a job,

a friend,

a character,

a mask,

a voice in my head.

The lie feels fucking good

when it spills out,

this mixture of confusion and adrenaline,

only sometimes though,

when it’s from the inner caverns

of my mouth,

a soft place to land

when I don’t know

how to say no to you

but couldn’t possibly

let my introverted octopus self

hurt your feelings

with honest words dripping

from me

like holy fucking water.

And when my first lover

entered me

without so much as a

warning or even an asking

of what I might want,

I clamped my mouth shut and

watched the ceiling fan

go round and round.

And when my dad died,

after the shock had worn off

for the people around me,

who didn’t even know my dad that well,

others felt I should move on,

oh come on,

move on,

move on with me,

work,

do,

work,

do,

nausea,

and I found myself detaching from even angels

for the sting of it all and learned to

not speak my loss out,

friends cut me off in mid sentence

so they wouldn’t have to even

hear his name

and I started to lie

about my grief,

“oh Im fine.”

Then in the cancer times,

Jordan getting sicker and sicker,

I spent my days

getting bad news

and forcing out choked silver linings,

lying every moment,

squeezing hope out of a tumor growing.

I lied about trips to

the hospital

because I didn’t want to bother co-workers

with awkward

cancer stories,

I lied about how I was doing,

what was hurting,

what I wanted,

even to my girlfriend

who sat with me in waiting rooms

at all hours of the morning,

holding my hand,

once I became silent

tis such a hard habit to break

even when your head’s screaming.

And now with my brother,

my better half

gone from here,

I feel things shifting,

they have to for survival,

and maybe someday to live loud,

not just coping.

I am teaching myself to speak again,

beginning at least

to learn where the lies

inside me come from,

because they were taught to me in harsh whispers

by cold capitalist machines in my sleep

with the radiator running and the abuser

banging on the door

as I plan escape routes.

Not something innately in my nature,

the lie,

years covering scars

so you couldn’t see

my aching tentacles eight

sticking out at all angles

in the silky moonlight

until the crows

carried me home

on their backs,

to bed,

to bed,

to sleep.