I feel bad for those who pretend, those who exaggerate.
In general, I feel bad for liars.
You portray a facade to your friends during the day, and come home to face the truth. Your home is no longer a humble abode, it’s an orifice crowded with facts: stored, locked, stacked in corners. How can you live with yourself?
You weave white lies into nooses to hang any hiccup in your recent tale. What do you mean you were busy. Katie was with you the other night. You could have come over. You drag these hiccups that hitch rides on your heels. Weighing you down. Down.
Down.
You scuff your heels in public not knowing you’ve left residue. Lies are contagious; honesty is viral.
Friends and enemies-to-be pick up your hiccups that you’ve left, sprawled out on the floor – your floor, my floor, her floor. Their memories’ pocket these pieces. They invite you over – to their house, to their clique – because they know you’ll drop something off. Katie annoys the shit out of her. She’s been distancing herself ever since Columbus Day weekend. You’re too busy stacking, storing, locking your missing patches to each story, that you don’t realize how much you’ve left behind. How much you’ve left to be picked up and passed along. But I mean, finders keepers, right?
As you’ve been off weaving white lies to hang or patch up the spotty parts, your friends have been sewing. They’ve been embroidering a quilt stitched with anything you didn’t confirm or forgot to mention; in the back of their heads, they know that nothing makes sense with out all the pieces.
You don’t know they have made this quilt. They know this too, but they comfort you anyway. Wrap you in compliments, warm you up with jokes and old times; they know you do not recognize the stitching. Soon they give you the quilt as a gift. You finally get to see these patches; the patches seem familiar, but you’ve moved onto different drama. Her and Katie never talk anymore. When I sit between them in class, it feels like they broke up. You make your bed and wrap yourself in the quilt. It feels itchy. You switch sides. It feels cold.
You can’t sleep. It’s a challenge to look in the mirror. Your reflection: bloodshot, black-rimmed eyes. Your friends come to realize you cannot lie in your own filth. They comfort you again and again. Are things with you and Katie okay? Are you okay?
You just smirk and say, “Yeah. I’m fine.”
You are forever in relapse.