FADING GLOW OF LIES

 

The Fading Glow of Lies   

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The stories you spin,

Unraveled threads you swear are gospel truth,

“So help me God,” you say, hand on heart,

Eyes glinting with a preacher’s zeal—

They don’t add up, don’t slot into place.

I’ve pored over them like a weary accountant,

Ledgers open, pencil chewed to splinters,

Giving you the benefit of every doubt,

Handing over my trust like a fragile heirloom,

Polished and offered on a trembling palm.

I’ve recalculated, twisted the numbers,

Tried to reconcile the jagged edges—

To balance the roles you play,

The versions you peddle with such casual grace—

But the math betrays you,

And the sum is a hollow echo in my chest.  

Once, your words were a siren’s call,

Laced with the sweet, sweet pheromones of your aura—

A musk that curled around me, warm and heady,

Drawing me in with magnetic intrigue,

A pull I couldn’t resist, like or not.

You were a lodestone, a force of nature,

Your presence a shimmering haze I stumbled toward,

Blinded by the beams of light you cast—

Golden rays I basked in, skin tingling,

Heart thumping with the thrill of your orbit.

I’d lie there, bathed in your glow,

Drinking in the promise of you,

A moth fluttering too close to the flame,

Ignorant of the scorch waiting in the wings.  

But now—oh, now—those beams have dulled,

Their brilliance faded to a flicker,

A lantern running low on oil,

Casting shadows where once there was radiance.

The scent of you, once thick as honey,

Drifts faint now, a ghost on the breeze,

A whiff of something spoiled beneath the sugar.

Your words, those honeyed lures,

Fail to align with the smiles you flash—

Teeth bared in a grin too wide, too practiced,

Promises of action dangling like bait,

Unfulfilled, swaying in the wind,

Hooks that snag but never hold.

I taste the rot beneath your charm,

A bitterness seeping through the cracks.  

I’ve traced the fault lines of your tales,

Each one a fracture splitting wider—

The fishing trips that stretched too long,

The late nights glazed with vague excuses,

The names that shift like sand in your retelling.

I gave you my faith, a rope to cling to,

And you knotted it with half-truths,

Let it fray in my hands as I clung tighter.

I’ve stood at the edge of this unraveling,

Peering into the chasm between what you say

And what lingers unsaid,

A silence louder than your loudest oaths.

The scales tip, the stories tilt,

And I’m left clutching air where trust once stood.  

Your aura, once a velvet cloak around my shoulders,

Now hangs threadbare, moth-eaten, cold—

The intrigue has soured to suspicion,

The magnetism a rusted pull I wrench free from.

Those beams of light I adored,

They’ve dimmed to a sickly pallor,

A glow that reveals more than it hides—

Every crease of deceit etched in your face,

Every hollow vow mirrored in your gaze.

I see you now, stripped of the sheen,

A storyteller unmasked,

Words crumbling like ash in my mouth,

And I wonder how I ever mistook

This dull flicker for a sun worth chasing.