A Necessary Lie

He loves my honesty, or so he says, and I feel his smile in raised hairs on the back of my neck and the freckles that stretch from my hands, shoulders, arms.  Oh, but I've been lying, for a lie can be the absence of truth just as easily as it can be the creation of a falsehood.  As I look at him, away from him, there's truth removed, restrained, relinquished, when instead of reaching and embracing with feeling, I smile sweetly and glance away.  The lie is in my refrain it's in the shadows I watch in the stead of him.  The lie is in what I'd be forced to say if I met his penetrating stare, shallowly.  For how honest I am, rather unintentionally and with slight regret I might add, the withheld truth is far greater.

But, the moment I consider releasing the unsaid, I pass a street with his last name and I remind myself that I care too much to bind him.