when my mother asks me why don't you tell me the truth
i can't tell her that truth is a two-ended being: a mouth
and an ear threaded by trust and here there's no trust or ear.
instead, i think of telling her this story:
once upon a time there was a king whose anger danced on the edge of his sword. one day after a really good morning fuck his wife the queen said: you're such a pookie except for your nose which is like an orgy inside a deflating zeppelin. angered the king pulled out his real sword and hacked her to death before she could moan. then he shattered the mirror to shards when he saw it reflected the truth of his nose and ordered all the mirrors in the world destroyed. then he asked every passerby about his nose and at first they all said the truth: it's like an igloo suffering from erectile dysfunction, my lord, and it's like the chinashop bull only ate burgers since his proverbial incident, your honor, and it's like the boulder that sisyphus started jerking off to once he got tired of pushing it, your highness. angered the king hacked them all to death. slowly everyone learned to lie to him and once he started wearing disguises they learned to lie to everyone else as well. like this years went on and the lies got bigger and better: my liege, your nose is only slightly big, my lordlihood, your nose is perfectly average, your majesty, your nose is in fact smaller than average, and your grace, in fact you don't have a nose at all. all was good until one day the king met a wandering bhikku and asked him: oye tonsures, i don't have a nose, do i? instead of answering the bhikku asked: if you don't have a nose how can you breathe? if you can't breathe how will you live? panicked the king wandered mad. there was no mirror to show him his nose, no layman to point to it, and, at the end, by his queen's mute grave he ran out of breath and died. and everyone lived happily ever after in their lies.
of course, i didn't tell this to my mother.
instead, i said nothing, which, after all, is the easiest form of truth.
~ ajay
18/7/2024
