The Cost of Certainty

The Price of Self-Deception 

Some days 

I sand the edges of truth 

not to hold it

but to keep it 

from cutting back

I tell myself

clarity is mercy:

a clean line

a surface I can trust

but I know the trick 

I’ve watched sculptors

white dust rising 

as they chip away everything

that won’t conform 

to what they need to believe

and I feel it —

the dust of what I’ve cut away 

settling on my hands

I do not know

if the idol that remains 

is revelation

or if I carved it

carefully, 

relentlessly, 

until nothing was left

that would contradict me 

I stand

on what I’ve made

and name it solid—

but some nights

I hear it shift

under my weight

© Ron Simpson Jr. 

May 15, 2026