Though my heart no longer beats,
it still aches, the past sour
like blood in my mouth.
I don’t want to remember,
but that song keeps taking me back.
Strolling the night,
smoking cigarettes in bars,
I seek truth.
When truth remains elusive,
I take out my flask.
One girl follows to see if I’m good,
but I’m more than a little bad.
That gets me pretty far most nights.
She likes me better when I sin.
They all like me better.
But sin no longer satisfies.
Filled with sorrow, yet no way to repair,
I bare my chest and ask to die.
She refuses. In dying, she says,
the good disappears with the bad.
She knows both. In me, in the world,
and certainly in herself.
The truth bleeds and eats away at my heart,
making me remember so many lives taken.
That song makes me remember
the pain I struggle to forget.
* * *
Lies.
The ones who love us tell them.
Lies.
Lies to lay us down.
Lies to wake us up again.
Convincing us that we’re to blame.
But they’re not real.
The words, the lovers,
both mainly in our heads.
The pain? That’s real.
The truth? Lies.