"The First Lie."
"She stood at the window between her cubicle and the mailroom.
A fury of white lights-- just sun
reflecting on another office building's windows.
What slams down slams out and again
until whiteness takes over everything.
Whiteness sounds like witness in her mind.
She wishes she hadn't have quit smoking.
She once felt closer to the sky in childhood, a brief meeting
with the clouds and a curious grow.
Now, the sky feels too large and expansive,
the impossible problem of space and how to fill it.
She lied the other day in the lunchroom.
A new temp, fresh out of school, with an eager grin
and her own stainless steel coffee mug--
what had she said?
She said, he's away for work.
Eyebrows twitched, but no one corrected
her, the hum of the fluorescents like the beginning
of a bad song.
The lie tasted sharp and flat like eating an index
card, something that wouldn't hurt you,
but might erase the facts and what some call the truth,
whatever that is."