Where the Mocking Nests

He
brushed me off
with the blink of a lash
and said:
“You’re an idiot.
You know nothing.”

And I said:

What you know
is what everyone knows,
common coin,
passed palm to palm,
words worn thin
like rumors
or old prayers.

But what I know
lives
in the shadow world.
The one you mock
because deep down…
you know
it’s mocking you.

You wear your shame
like a second skin,
then spit it back
at the mirror.
You forget
so you can humiliate
what
humiliats you.

But the truth,
oh, the truth you deny,
refuse,
bury,
mute,
it waits.

It waits in silence.
It dances in mirrors.
It laughs
through your logic.
It echoes
in every smug certainty
you mistake for wisdom.

Because what you don’t know…
what you refuse to know,
is mocking you.

In everything
you so foolishly,
so desperately,
believe
you understand.