His Creator’s Lie

She smiles through her forming tears, trying to hide behind her sleeves to dry them without me noticing, but I do. I notice everything. Turning her head away, the lies crumble in a single moment. We look at each other knowingly, briefly.

I had suspected it long enough. I noticed when she would leave in the middle of the night and go into our spare room, locking the door behind her. Sometimes I would get up to stare at the pale blue light peeking out from underneath.

As the sound of faint beeps echoed, another one of his memories would come flooding in. She thought I was asleep. I looked like him, I sounded like him, I even acted like him. I was a near perfect replica.

It’s our anniversary night, or rather, it’s theirs. All I had told her was that she looked beautiful. Then, the corner of her lips twitched suddenly. She was remembering something unpleasant. In sadness, anger, perhaps regret.

I always knew that I couldn’t feel the way she could. Her emotions rose and fell, turning into crashing waves and eventually subsided. She tells me I’m an artist. A poet, she calls me. But I could never be seized with the feelings he was inspired by.

She looks back at me with her glistening eyes, back at her almost perfect creation. Raising her glass, she holds onto that weak smile.

I can see she wants me to join her in the lie again, to convince me it’s still worth living in.

So, I raise my glass, and clinking it with hers, I escape into my creator’s lie.