Silent nights, though beautiful, can strike at the soul.

The mind wanders, and I can't help myself.

I twist in my covers to shut it out. Shut it out.

Days can go by without me thinking of much more than activities.

I see people. Act pleasant.

I turn away and it doesn't matter how I was.

Blending, I find, is a skill.

When they inquire, how are you?, no one wants the truth.

So smile, try act like you mean it.

Small-talk isolates us, so I say what is required.

You said time heals. I say it widens the gap.

I see that smile with those lines drawn on your face, written with worry.

You told me to take my memories,

To dig myself a little hole were they can be cherished inside my heart.

All is meant well but you forget that the mind betrays a person.

Words go fleeting until I jumble what was said.

Images blur until there are no faces there.

Sounds become inaudible, and the

Smell of that old leather jacket leaves me.

Memories aren't authentic.

They're embellished, fabricated, until what we say we remember

Is just as plastic as that old Tupperware you kept hidden in those cabinets.

I speak in riddles, some may say I lie,

But the whiteness that embalms them outweighs any damage.

You are calmed, so you say, unharmed from what was meant to coax you.

Honesty is a double edged sword, so we make it blunt,

We just don't tell each other.

Simple secrets kept out of sight, even if we feel their presence.

My words can be soft gestures but I taste those lies, they stay with me.

When we say that we will be fine,

It is almost inevitable that we start to weave our way through those untruths.

We say those words without meaning, even if our aim is hope.

Belief in falsehoods invigorates us. That pep we've lost in our step.

Still, it only takes us so far until we fall back into that pit.

Twisting inside those sheets, with nothing more

Than the tick, tock that never sleeps.

Seconds, minutes, hours go by.

Some say that the truth is revealed at night.

I recall old movies were the demon hidden within the man showed itself in the moonlight.

Like the Wolf-Man, only to be known with the moon's white-wash touch.

It covered him until he was bare, ripped of the masking front.

If that's true, maybe my truth is exposed too.

I grow vulnerable like the man did, and

When the sun comes up, I go back, revert to that pretence.

Seemingly normal, whatever that word means.