Lies I Tell Myself While Eating Pizza and Chain-Smoking in the Dark
I tell myself I’m fine
and burn the crust on purpose,
watching grease stiffen on the box lid,
a skin forming where heat used to be.
Smoke hangs low,
gets caught on the fridge magnets,
slides off old phone numbers and slogans
like it’s learning how to leave.
Each exhale tastes faintly of someone else’s night,
someone laughing a room away from me.
I tell myself I’m building a life,
but I’m inventorying pepperoni,
counting cigarettes by the way
the ash folds in on itself,
how close the tray is to spilling
onto the floor I won’t sweep.
Outside, the street stutters,
a piano missing keys.
Inside, I practice explanations,
line them up, tap them with a finger
until even my reflection nods,
tired of arguing.
I tell myself tomorrow is a hinge.
I tell myself it already swung.
I tell myself half a pie
and three cigarettes
can slow the noise long enough
to pass for peace.
I lie carefully,
until the room smells like cold cheese and smoke,
until the night presses its face to the window,
and I can’t tell where my hands end
and the grease begins,
where the ache slips from my fingers
and settles behind my eyes,
waiting.
A Flag in the Alley
The alley smells of rain and gasoline.
A flag hangs above it,
sun-bleached, split open,
its edges gnawed thin.
Stars sag in the fabric,
straining against threads that gave up.
I think of the hands that lifted it,
the hands that fed it fire,
the hands that will touch it again
without asking where it’s been.
I step into its shadow.
It doesn’t fall clean.
It breaks apart,
slipping through holes,
skittering across puddles,
crawling the brick like something alive.
The wind drags the loose ends low enough
to scrape my shoulder.
I kneel.
My fingers snag on threads,
feel where heat once passed,
where color fled.
Light leaks through the torn places,
cuts the ground into pieces.
For a moment the alley holds its breath.
I imagine a city
that didn’t need flame to speak,
where no one had to tear a symbol open
to find themselves inside it.
The flag stirs.
Its shadow rearranges.
Each rip carries what remains,
not a question,
but the shape left behind
when belief learns how to burn.
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