Author’s note — I wrote “Creating the Lie” after noticing how easily desire and fear can become tools, how a look or a phrase can start to redraw the edges of someone else’s reality. Sitting with that unease, I wanted to trace the moment when care turns into control, when a story meant to protect quietly becomes a cage. This poem is my way of listening to that shift, almost under my breath, before the manipulation fully names itself.
Creating the Lie
How do I create this lie?
How do I build a world
inside your mind
until you believe
what I believe?
How do I make you fantasize
about what you could have,
or become afraid
of what you might lose?
Read Next → Ebony
Read Next
Author’s Note — “Creating the Lie” lingers in the space where manipulation becomes a kind of armor, the careful story we spin so the world feels less dangerous and more obedient. The danger, of course, is the quiet moment when we realize the lie has outgrown its purpose, and the person it is protecting is no longer the one we meant to be.
— Author’s Note: This poem grew out of the unease I feel at how easily we can script reality for someone else, one suggestion at a time. Writing it let me stay with the psychology of control—the seduction of being believed, and the quiet terror of watching someone hand over their doubt. If there is a truth here, it is that every lie rearranges the room we share, and sooner or later we both have to live inside what I’ve built.
