santos scribes

she was smiling when she said
she wasn’t gonna sugarcoat it anymore

because she didn’t have to
because they’d settled the lawsuit

because she’d lost her job but regained her soul;
i’m paraphrasing but you catch the gravity of the situation

because you’ve been her before too, haven’t you-
pushed hard against that stitch in your side

from the candy coated comfort of a glittery confected lie
because we have to do that with the truth sometimes, don’t we-

dress it up before we swallow it whole
bittersweet somethings we hide in plain sight of ourselves

call something more palatable:
wintery cloaks of sugary confected half truths

when we tuck it up there beside our dated family portraits
and our twice potted poinsettias

smile and nod when we know it’s not real
when we know there is no real way to hide from ourselves

that no one ever eats the stale-spiced brown house anyway
its thick painted frostings of gumdrop snow