Tell Me a Story

By Hillary Lyon

Tell Me a Story, She Said,

Make it a mystery.

So I concocted a tale,
a cocktail concerning
a private plane, a stowaway,
a debris field.

A secret affair, a radical manifesto,
a tiny rhythmic beeping.
Red numbers tumbling down
like crisp autumn leaves.

A smug politico, a movie mogul,
a sex slave.
I was not a slave, she corrected.
I was an up-and-coming starlet.

So I reconfigured the figures
ruminating in my mind:
Witnesses on the ground spoke
with their hands

on their hearts of fireworks,
a meteor, ball lightning.
Next morning, a clean-up crew
assembled, uniformed and mute.

The black-suited FBI
sowed a rich crop of falsehoods
watered with conspiracy theories,
thereby reaping brightly spun distractions

like pinwheels at the state fair.
They were so successful, so thorough,
that no one knows what happened,
what really happened.

Not even you.

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Bio: With a Masters in English Lit, Hillary Lyon founded and for 20 years acted as senior editor for the independent poetry publisher, Subsynchronous Press. Her speculative fiction and crime short stories, drabbles, and poems have appeared in numerous print and online publications. She’s also an SFPA Rhysling Award nominated poet. When not writing, Hillary also creates illustrations for horror/sci-fi, and pulp fiction sites. She’s lived in France, Brazil, Canada, and several states in the U.S.; she currently resides in southern Arizona. She can be found at her blog HERE.