The Art of Lying: Prose Poetry

I am a liar.

Let me tell you a story you wouldn’t even try to understand: I have vanished into easels and thrown myself into an ocean of stories.

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I solved the jigsaw puzzle of my heart by pouring over a scalding hot alphabet soup. The soup which looked like liquid lights of a hurricane lamp and gaseous darkness of my sleep-deprived irises. A witch taught me the recipe when I was dying, shivering in the absence of warmth of this dehumanizing world, choking on a colourful poison sold in the underground market of society.

You see, there were things I saw around myself which made me hate my very existence not because the world isn’t kind to me but because I wasn’t kind enough to this world to restore my faith in my own humanity.

I feel my privilege for being, just being in this unconstitutional world. It crawls on my skin like spiders who made a web of cynicism inside my soul.

I feel my helplessness, my underprivilege for being, just being in this unconstitutional world. Being someone who fell in love with rainbows, being a woman in a world where they dehumanized my existence and fed me to fire. My vocal cords were torn away like they are damaged DJ equipment of a rave party. I feel my rage and I bloom in rage like night-blooming jasmine because rage is adrenaline, it is the power to seek justice, it is hope.

But hope is an infidel lover. Whenever it starts romancing with hourglass sands and leaves me yearning, I tell myself I am an insomniac and hopelessness is sleep apnea, I cannot sleep, I refuse to sleep. My sleep is my death.

I hold onto hope like wives hold onto cheating husbands because helplessness is a scar that wants to bleed.

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But the day I met the witch, my bed was a coffin and no one left me blankets despite knowing I get cold easily.

“Stop expecting” my inner voice yelled.

I choked on a fluorescent vial of poison called “ catastrophe of humanity” or as little children call “today”.

“ Stop feeling too much,” my inner voice whispered.

The witch taught me the recipe on my deathbed because only the hungry person can make the alphabet soup and I swear to whatever Gods my mother worships, I was starving. I picked out the letters from the soup and wrote. I wrote to stop hating my existence, wrote to sleep without wondering if I died. If I died without laying a brick to built a home in this tattered humanity.

I wrote to lie.

I learned to lie in my art and my stories because escapism is warmth, escapism is hope, escapism is the antidote and fun fact fluorescent poisons are icky.

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So, that is how I have vanished into easels and thrown myself into an ocean of stories. Some days, I make rainbow sunsets and read happy endings because my art is my lie. Some days I speak the truth because lying is exhausting. On those days I oil paint the violence of my identity, the burden of my privilege, and read stories that remind me why my existence is a sin in this monochrome world.

My art is a lie and I believe when you make a gorgeous lie, the entire cosmos signs a contract with you to make it a reality.

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Yes, I am a liar. I haven’t spoken the truth for so long, so here’s the end of the story you wouldn’t even try to understand.

This oil painting is finished. 

//”The Art of Lying”// Enigma

Copyright © 2016-2021 Enigma. All rights reserved.

Picture Credits: Enigma (Inktober 2020 Art Day 9 Throw)

Art Inspiration: Art and writing complete the fragments of my heart. It simply sprung from the idea of art consuming me. One of the rawest pieces of writing I have ever written.

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