Lie

Lie

The first lie I ever told
was to myself.
It sounded like survival,
tasted like salt on an open wound
I swore was a scar.

We call it coping,
as if giving false names to our grief
makes it holy.
As if renaming the ache
will soften its teeth.

I have dressed emptiness
in expensive words,
spun absence
into something resembling a hymn,
and called the hollow
a home.

We lie for the same reasons
we bleed -
because it proves
we're still here.
Because silence,
unbroken,
becomes unbearable.

And the cruelest lie
isn’t the one they told you,
but the one you chose to keep.

The one you wore
like a second skin,
until it fit so well
you forgot it was never yours.

And the truth waits
like a blade in the dark,
silent, patient,
knowing one day
you will run out of places to hide.

And in that final quiet,
when your voice is nothing
but a cracked window
letting in the night,
the truth won’t scream.
It won’t demand.

It will simply stand there -
naked, merciless,
and undeniable.

And you will see
that every lie

was just a way to delay
the unbearable,
not erase it.

Because nothing spoken
to save yourself
was ever meant
to save you.

Reviews

[Broken.buddy]

Your poem begins with a very clear and honest premise: that the first lie is inward, not outward : and from there, you sustain a tone of introspection without slipping into self-pity or overstatement. That’s difficult to do when writing about personal pain, especially when invoking themes like survival, self-deception, and grief. But you manage to keep a consistent voice that reads as reflective rather than performative. The progression from the personal lie, to the broader human impulse to rename pain, to the inevitability of truth: all of that is well-controlled.

you are treating lying not as a moral failure but as a functional, even necessary, act. You don’t glorify it, but you don’t condemn it either. That neutrality is like my poems, the point of view of an observer.

thank you for sharing

[M 💕]

Thank you so much for your kind review and for taking some time to read this! I really appreciate it a lot!