Sometimes I Lie

by Alice Feeney

I’ve always delighted in the free fall between sleep and wakefulness. Those precious few semiconscious seconds before you open your eyes, when you catch yourself believing that your dreams might just be your reality. A moment of intense pleasure or pain, before your senses reboot and inform you who and where and what you are.

People are not mirrors—they don’t see you how you see yourself.

Sometimes I think it’s best to say nothing at all—silence cannot be misquoted.

I can’t remember what happened to me, but I know, with unwavering certainty, that this man, my husband, had something to do with it.

The door opens and closes and I am alone again with a man who sounds like my husband, but behaves like a stranger.

For once I don’t want to be the one asking the questions. I wish someone would listen to my answers and tell me whether my version of the truth is still correct. Sometimes the right thing to do is wrong, but that’s just life.

I’ve never been fond of Paul’s mother. She lives on her own in a dated, drafty bungalow near the Norfolk coast. I hate the place and have only been to visit a few times. I always get the impression that she sees straight through me and doesn’t like the view.

My parents are dead. I don’t know how you forget

The mind is a powerful tool, it can create entire worlds and it’s certainly more than capable of playing a few tricks in order to aid self-preservation.

“Madeline’s mic was still on. They did a guest in the studio, then went back to her. Everything she just said went out live on national television.” I do my very best to look surprised.

She’s traveled a quarter of a century through time and space to remind me who I was then and tell me who I must be now.

Some people are ghosts before they are dead.