The Falsehood of January

There’s a stinging on my lips, a bitterness on my tongue, a pulsating, tearing of the flesh as I dig my nails into my palms each time I see you smile my way. That casual, endearing smile. That smile that tells me and the whole world around you that you love me. That smile that first took ahold of me, and made me feel what everyone I knew spoke of, but I didn’t believe it truly existed.

You’re still the same one, still dress the same in your smart classy suits, your shoes so perfectly matched. Your hair still tousled in an “I don’t care” kind of way, but you really do.

We both know you do.

You touch me on the small of my back, pull me in and tell me how much you love me. And I smile like I always have- just not as deeply. Yes, everything is still the same, and yet now it’s not. I watch you as you laugh with those around you, the same thin lines crinkling around your soft eyes. The soft, pale eyes I fell so in love with across that crackled pavement in the city that care forgot.

You’re still the same, yes, but I’m not.

Ah the power of knowing, we all want it and seek it out, but sometimes when we get ahold of it, we want so desperately for it to go away. We wonder would our lives be back to how they were if we never knew the truth? Could we go back to carelessly rolling in between the sheets, kissing each other’s flesh, feeling that lip quivering grin when your name is spoken? Could we go back to believing those three little words actually mean something true?

But now they fall flat on ears that refuse to listen. Refuse to believe. Every word that has ever fallen from your silky lips has landed on mine with a burning acidity now.

A fool. A blind fool.

I force a smile at those trying to make small talk, I tell them how happy we are together, how in love. I smile back at you, although I can feel a hand crushing my throat. I try not to gasp.

Lies.

That’s what ruins our happiness in some way or another. That’s what crushes our ability to believe such pure emotions exist. I know about your lies.

I sip my drink, smile, give them the facade that everything is fine, although I’m on the verge of screaming what I know. But I can’t. It comes to the surface time and time again, but stops, pushed back deep inside to crumble and rot. I don’t understand. It eats me now from the inside, only glimpsing the world through my glassy, bleak stare. It comes forth, barely discrete, in my snide remarks, hinting to you what I know, only to retreat, defeated, but growing even more when it’s met with a dismissal. If I speak, if I say what I truly know, will my last perfect little lie of hope for the tarnished past no longer exist?

I bite my lips and feel them swelter into a sting, the bitterness on my tongue growing, a pulsating, tearing of the flesh as I dig my nails into my palms each time I see you smile my way.

Liar. That’s what I tell myself. That’s all we are. Liars.