PAPER DREAMS

It started with a lie… a tiny white lie.

I console myself, ‘no one else is hurt.’

Anyway, never again, I tell myself.

The lie resides in my yesteryears.

Now, I am in the future.

My tomorrows have morphed to the present.

Time turning slowly to dust.

I have made peace with truth withheld,

or so I think.

For even now when the light is turned off,

as I lie, naked in my own thoughts

the lying scar tissue niggles and squirms.

‘Shut up!’ I mutter and turn. But sometimes

the guilty scab writhes and crawls off,

revealing the lie. The tiny white lie.

Faded like an old scar

No longer so little… or white.

It is so damn hard to write at times. Life, and if I am absolutely honest, all those TWOT books, overwhelm, but thanks to this newsletter, I am writing something at the least.

A theme I like to explore through my poems, and a novel I hope to serialize soon, is guilt. As part of my exploration of the theme, I wrote about white lies – those we utter, and those we sometimes commit by staying silent. White lies are always accompanied by justifications – often valid ones. But what if truth is absolute and ruthless in its purity? Whether you believe in absolute truth or consider truth to be relative, sometimes our defences and justifications for our half-truths and truths withheld crumble and we are left staring at what we have become.

Anyways… do let me know what you think of the poem.