The same words arranged in identical lines can tell conflicting stories if listed in a different order. And a contingent truth is, by definition, true, but could just as easily have been false.

Don’t tell me you’re not happy 
I’ll say 
when the mist lifts 
I go outside 
to see the roses 
so brilliantly red 
the wounds are still 
healing 
and I am not 
scared to smile 
you are 
enough 
you are 
scared to smile 
and I am not 
healing 
the wounds are still 
so brilliantly red 
to see the roses I go outside 
when the mist lifts I’ll say 
Don’t tell me you’re not happy

Process

I discovered a rough draft of the initial half of this poem in an old journal and felt the first line exceedingly ominous in isolation, despite the overall positivity of the piece at the time. The resulting unease essentially inspired me to write a second poem originally intended to accompany it, but that outcome wasn’t particularly satisfying; I wanted a piece that was decidedly disturbing with negative connotations, but I also wanted the reader to understand how it could be perceived drastically differently. Similar to how two people can regard a former friendship as either toxic and soul-sucking or as symbiotic and genuinely enjoyable, or how two people read the same piece and walk away with vastly differing morals, or how two people can live through the same experience and describe it so differently, an audience would identify the tales as entirely separate unrelated anecdotes. So I messed around with the line order until reverse messages could be conveyed.

I had, at first, wanted it to be an exercise in empathy, more along the lines of “you may be happy, but someone else could be suffering, so be aware”, and I think the execution more so depicts the happiness as damagingly artificial and encourages authenticity.

Poetry is very far outside my comfort zone, and writing this affirmed to me that it’s also really hard–especially when it’s a palindrome poem. But I also realized palindrome poems specifically can convey discordant themes more evocatively, in my mind, than prose, so I definitely intend to explore them further.