your lies follow me like shadows
flickering, tumbling, weeping in their
faded gloom
and strewn haphazardly across the
gallows
from which swings any emotion I might
have felt
framed like memories too long
gone away
until
listening with stifled breath
to a whimper, a cry, a swansong
I know I could have stopped this before
I ever cared to know you
but something inside said it would
rather
wait and see
if the promises stayed true while
the lies cut across the skies like
locusts in stifling
September heat
I see you cringe under their dreary
press
the thickness cramping and boiling
around you
a sort of stumbling duress
you can choke on it
inhale it
lost inside a pool of lies so deep that
not
even words could bale you into safety
from this tangled web of half-truths
and poorly constructed thought
an anathema
you are a curse that tramples on my
daydreams
while on the outside that secret smile
widens for the camera
disappearing in private
away from me
like something you should hide
a surreptitious derision only I can see
because
you wear your faces the same way a
harlequin wears
his masks
everyone thinks your perfection is more
than skin deep
though you and I know better
stricken and
shocked
by the depth of emotion fettered by our
actions
and our words that mean nothing
spitefully trite yet
surprisingly innocent and pure amongst
a garden of syllables
strung about like fairy lights and
dreams
I think that I can catch you
your imagined candor snarling on its
rough edges and the hatred it begets
trapping you
like a butterfly on a sticky dew-wet
strand
of course I’m wrong
neither one of us is surprised when
instead of fleeing
instead of fighting to breathe from
beneath the lilies
I find myself sinking
deeper in
your deadly siren’s song