Author’s Notes:

Some people carry grudges all life long, all the way to their grave.

I picture their hearts like a dark, cold cemetery, with detailed grudges engraved in stone. Relationships they once held dear are lost without hope of resurrection.

On this one, I feel like the title is an essential part of the poem itself.

My hope is that “Here: Lies” carries the message that our grudges, though based on real offenses, are often also cocooned in a protective narrative of lies that we weave, the story we tell ourselves about the other person so that we can keep clenching that grudge.

For there to be any hope of resurrecting a relationship, both sides have to be willing to look at the full truth, the full story from both perspectives. That’s hard for people to hear. And it can be hard to speak.

For there to be hope of a relationship resurrection, we have to bury the lies and face the uncomfortable truth.