I killed her slowly, in broad daylight,
with a thousand soft deletions.
First a comma, then a clause,
then the inconvenient ribs of evidence
filed down to anecdote.
She bled statistics in the comments section,
gasped footnotes that no one read.
I dressed the wound in trending hashtags,
poured certainty like cheap champagne
until the bubbles drowned the source.
Now she lies elegant and flexible—
a body rearranged for every room.
Witnesses applaud the surgery:
How alive she looks, they say,
how relevant, how useful.
I keep a sliver of her in my pocket,
sharp enough to cut my own tongue
when the mirror asks questions.
The rest I scatter like confetti
at the festival of agreeable fictions.
Truth is dead. Long live the narrative.
-
Author:
Matthew R. Callies (
Offline) - Published: July 3rd, 2026 00:29
- Comment from author about the poem: "Veritacide" is a word I made up by combining the Latin word "veritas" (meaning "truth") with the suffix "-cide" meaning "killing".
- Category: Unclassified
- Views: 9
- Users favorite of this poem: Tristan Robert Lange
Offline)
Comments3
You have done a great job with a powerful central metaphor that makes the poem thought-provoking.
I believe a narrative can become a dominant truth in people's minds, but whether it becomes truth itself depends on what we mean by "truth."
A wonderful neologism invented and poetically used in this write. Well done
What stayed with me most, Matthew, was, "First a comma, then a clause, / then the inconvenient ribs of evidence..." What a brilliant way to show that truth is so often distorted by tiny edits rather than grand lies. Beautifully crafted, my friend. 🌹🖤🙏🕯️🐦⬛
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