lies

i never understood why people described lies as saccharine, as if one could slit open the lung of a liar to find it glazed with honey.

i think lies have to do with—not touch exactly—but when some part deep inside you leans out to clasp your wrist and finds—no, prays—that it is but a stranger’s flesh.

when butterflies emerge from a chrysalis lacking and try to shudder themselves—the frisson of chitin punctuated by the shattered gasps of a heart—into something else.

hoping, just hoping, that maybe they’re lying their way to anticipating the truth.