The Constellations of Deceit
The silence drops a velvet shroud, the streetlights die to gold,
And one by one, the star-eyes wake, the ancient, frosty, bold.
I stand below the vast, black cup, where pinprick fires combust,
And tell myself the gilded lies, the ones I know I must.
I said the choice was forced on me, the hollow word was true;
I swore the bridge I burned was rotten, long past its time, and blue.
I traced the lines of self-defense, a map of righteous claim,
And choked the whisper of the truth, afraid to name its name.
But in the dark, the diamond points are not the casual light;
They are the pupils, wide and cold, that bore into the night.
They see the little, nervous twitch, the flicker of the mouth,
The shaky foundations of the house I built facing the South.
They know the words I spoke to mirrors, the ones I couldn't bear;
The galaxies of honesty, suspended in the air.
They chart the orbit of my doubt, the comet of my fear,
And clock the heavy, slow rotation of the lie I hold so dear.
The celestial surveillance finds no comfort in my plea,
No softening of the stellar glare, no pity cast on me.
Because the eyes that truly watch, that measure all my strain,
Are not the distant, burning suns, but windows in the brain.
And while I gaze upon the heavens, looking for a sign,
The truth I've bottled starts to fizz and crack the glass of mine.
For in the end, it's not the night that catches out my thread,
But knowing that the stars have eyes because I wished them dead.
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