I’ve watched you lie
To end a conversation:
Eyes sparkling, head nodding;
Such sumptuous
Contagious
Conviction.
I’ve watched you create
Stories on the spot,
Invent people and problems
Characters and challenges
Victors and victims
Reduced to anecdotes,
Bludgeoned to insignificance
Beneath the weight of your
Signature chuckle,
And you, my verbose villain;
Always the champion of charm.
I’ve watched you fabricate a persona
To evoke pity
To invoke commiseration
To alleviate boredom
To inveigle attention
To project an image
To be dynamic
To be memorable
To entertain —
Whilst I stood by, amused;
The test audience
For your game.
…And I admit
I’ve always somewhat
Admired the show,
Though irksome at intervals;
I’ve always valued
This thing you become,
This creature that emerges,
This effortless storyteller,
A personality you brandish
To slay me at your feet;
Because secretly, I thought:
God forbid this ship should flounder,
At least I’ll have
This laughter, this levity
To billow its sails.
But you can never seem to remember
The parts I can’t seem to forget;
Our history has hitches
Blips and blanks in the timeline
And your distorted version
Is all you post to the wall,
Leaving me anchored
In debilitating mistrust
Of my own memory.
And after the litany of little lies
You tell me now
These big “truths”
These beliefs in me you say you have
This unwavering confidence in my being
You’ve purportedly always felt,
These snippets to attach
With scissors and sellotape and string,
Addendums I’m tasked to accept in the aftermath
And to submit into the sequence now,
Stories you’ve experienced in isolation
Stories that existed but weren’t shared
With a soul until now;
This apology-cum-confession
Caked in emotional declarations
That I’m supposed to hang my hat on
And trust you…
…Trust you?
My dear,
I’ve seen you lie
To end a conversation
So casually,
So carelessly…
That I wonder now
If I’m perhaps next in line;
Just another story to tell
Another file to pull
From your arsenal
Of anecdotes.
