Patricia Wallace Jones

White Lie

by Carol A. Taylor

You ask if I still love you. I don’t know
why it should matter now. I always say
I do. It’s what you want to hear, and so
I fudge; it costs me little either way.

My egotistic darling, for your part
you must like thinking that somebody cares
enough to sit and nurse a broken heart
through silence and indifference. Unawares,

you drift away like summertime, and then
when I’ve forgotten how to love, or why,
you turn up wondering how I have been,
and once again I offer you the lie

that strokes your vanity. I’ve no regret.
Enjoy the gift. It’s all of me you’ll get.

Carol Taylor co-administers the online metrical workshop Poet & Critic, www.poetandcritic.com. She was Administrator at Eratosphere from 2001 to 2007 and is a contributing editor to Umbrella Journal. Her poems have appeared in in Iambs & Trochees, Light Quarterly, The Barefoot Muse, Umbrella Journal, Susquehanna Quarterly, and Alsop Review Print Anthology One.