Professional Liars
It started as a game small things, harmless things like saying I'd already been somewhere or pretending I knew a name I didn't little sparks of fiction just to see if anyone noticed
No one did So I got better
I learned timing, tone how to lace truth with just enough posion to make it believable hold to hold eye contact like I wasn't building a house of glass around my own life
People laughed they trusted me they leaned in closer when I spoke
and I mistook that for something earned
I lied for convenience then for comfort then for the quiet thrill of watching reality bend around something I invented
It felt like control like power like I could rewrite anything I didn't like about myself and no one would ever know
but lies don't stay small they multiply in the dark crawl into places you forget to check start speaking for you when you're too tired to keep up
I lost track first of what I said of who I was supposed to be of which version of me belonged in which room
Then I lost people
They didn't leave all at once it was slower than that distance disguised as patience doubt disguised as silence until one day there was no left to convince
Just me and the echo of everything I ever said coming back wrong
Now even the truth sounds rehearsed in my mouth even honesty feels like a tirck I'm trying to sell myself
I built a life out of stories called it personality called it survival called it anything but what it was
a slow erosion of anything real
And now when I try to tell the truth there's no one listening who believes me
Not even me
that's the thing about becoming a professional
you get so good at lying you forget how to stop and by the time you want
there's nothing left worth telling the truth about
