Liar

She made things up: for example, that she was really
a man.  After she'd taken off her cotton floral
day-frock she was him alright, in her head,
dressed in that heavy herringbone from Oxfam.
He was called Susan actually.  The eyes in the mirror
knew that, but she could stare them out.

Of course, a job; of course, a humdrum city flat;
of course, the usual friends.  Lover?  Sometimes.
She lived like you do, a dozen slack rope-ends
in each dream hand, tugging uselessly on memory
or hope.  Frayed.  She told stories.  I lived
in Moscow once...  I nearly drowned...  Rotten.

Lightning struck me and I'm here to tell...  Liar.
Hyperbole, falsehood, fiction, fib were pebbles tossed
at the evenings flat pool; her bright eyes
fixed on the ripples.  No one believed her.
Our secret films are private affairs, watched
behind the eyes.  She spoke in subtitles.  Not on.

From bad to worse.  The ambulance whinged all the way
to the park where she played with the stolen child.
You know the rest.  The man with the long white wig
who found her sadly confused.  The top psychiatrist
who studied her in gaol, then went back home and did
what he does every night to the Princess of Wales.

Carol Ann Duffy