Lie to Me

Theredish.com,. 'Do You Know?'. N.p., 2015. Web. 13 Nov. 2015.
Theredish.com,. ‘Do You Know?’. N.p., 2015. Web. 13 Nov. 2015.

Lie to me. Please lie to me.

Let me not know that this is my truth, my reality. God let me not know. Keep my eyes clouded, blind. Let my ears bleed; prevent me from hearing those agonized cries.

They told me it’d get better when I was older. I’m older. Liars. Oh the sweet lie you did feed me.

Feed it to me, again. Now I beg of you. Feed it to me. Do you hear? But I am all alone. My weapon my only friend.

It murders, yet protects me. My hand trembles yet my finger is steady upon the cold trigger. A decision. It takes one decision to end his life. A father to his children. A husband to his wife. A son to his mother. We kill him together, we end his life. I can’t hear the sound of its initial release. He goes down. Eyes lifeless. I did that to him. No. The gun manipulated me, didn’t it? It’s not all my fault, for wasn’t I the gun’s server? Was it not I who followed through with its devious plan?

Come home. They tell me to come home. A pat on the back. Hands outstretched. Thank you’s.

I killed him. Killed him. A country free, people saved. Sweet freedom brings the onslaught of the tortured cries of his family. The task had to be executed.

Lie to me. Let me find pride in what I have just done. Let me hold my head high when his mother lowers hers as he’s buried into the ground. Let me smile when she will never know happiness again. All is well. Lie to me. Lie to me endlessly. My people, feed it to me.

My country proud, but it was not our soil the blood was spilled upon. It was on their very land. They feel that sorrow, yet you claim to feel it as well. Pathetic mimicry. You do not walk upon the blood of your fellow brother. For I did not die, he did. We both spilled blood. Not on our land, on his. My land safe, their land unprotected. The fatalities occur there, always there. Applaud me. Thank me. I deserve it, do I not? Look up to me. Boys and girls look up to me. For if you choose, I will be the one whispering the sweet lies to your deaf ears.

I beg of you to lie, but oh how I hate you for it.

You never think its real. How familiar it is. You always think it’s a faraway sadness. Can’t you see how it always mocks me, right here? Right on my very doorstep. How it haunts me? How I cry?

Happiness can never shine in dead eyes, but it can always be imitated. The tormented always are the best pretenders.

It is you who decides for me; what I feel. I never said a word. You know you can never discern, but try to. Yet what’s absurd, are those of you who feign to understand and think you can fathom, and give me scornful pity.

I bathe in your deceit and lies, mistake it for cleansing water, when it was a corrosive liquid that caused erosion upon my very skin, revealing my truth when all I desperately wanted was to hide it.

We are the same, aren’t we now?

We never did feel. You can’t, whereas I felt, but became accustomed to it.

What is it to feel, when all you have ever been is numb?

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3 thoughts on “Lie to Me

  1. Dear Sadia,

    Oh my god. Did I ever fall in love with your voice in this piece! Bravo! Bravo!
    I honestly don’t even know where to start to praise this blog. I have goosebumps on my arms and tears flying from my eyes.

    Well let me start with this, when you opened the piece by saying “Lie to me. Please lie to me.” I was immediately hooked and you did a magnificent job at keeping me, as a reader, attentive throughout this piece.

    What marvels me, is how you really spoke to the innocence of this man/woman- you spoke to the condition of his soul haunting him every time he committed a heinous deed. What I really loved was how you weaved it into his absolute need to oppress the soul that made him feel through his acceptance of lie and deceit.

    This line: “I can’t hear the sound of its initial release. He goes down. Eyes lifeless. I did that to him. No. The gun manipulated me, didn’t it?” hit me straight into the gut. I have never really thought about what it would be like to commit such a sin in the moment. I had never bothered to open myself up to the bundle of suffering and madness that comes along with such. But you- you did. And the empathy for such a man who could not possibly know any better was evident in this piece. You took me to such a fragile space as to force me to also begin to understand an even bigger and greater circumstance of the face terrorism withholds.

    I could go on for hours about what your wrote, but you should just know that no words or praise is good enough to explain the feelings you have evoked within me.

    If I would have to give you any feedback it would pertain to the paragraph towards the end of the piece that begins with this line, “You never think its real. How familiar it is. You always think it’s a faraway sadness.” For some reason I had to re-read that multiple times to completely understand because I didn’t see the connection between its previous line, ” I beg you to lie, but oh how I hate you for it. For when you lie, you remain ignorant then.” I can not really put a finger on what got me there- but the flow seemed slightly interrupted. This being said- I can be completely wrong and have misinterpreted what I have read, so please do not take my feedback as a definite. Any by no means did it take away from the beauty of this piece.

    Thank you for the honesty you shared within the piece of magnificence.

    Love,
    Malika

    1. Dear Malika,

      Thank you for gracious and kind-hearted words. Your positive feedback on this piece truly offered as gratification to me as the writer. I often feel desensitized to a subject like war and terror. I cannot fathom what one feels, but one thing I know is that killing (whether it be for saving someone) causes insufferable amounts of torment within the realms of ones mind. This darker note is what permitted me the ability to develop a connection to war, and to simply write. I loved how you mentioned what I was portraying was the oppression of the soul. That served to me as validation as the author, and elevated my confidence.

      I also want to thank you for noticing the awkward misplaced line, you have not misinterpreted anything. I truly now feel that the line was placed in such a way that it disrupted the fluidity within my piece, but yet I felt it needed to be somewhere to add a note of clarity. I will look into adjusting that!

      Thank you once again.

      Sincerely,
      Sadia

  2. PS. “Any by no means” was actually supposed to say “And my no means.” I just can’t go back and edit it now 🙁

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