Extraordinary Lies

Written for Wea’ve Written Weekly.
Our PoW, Violet, asks us to write a
Golden Shovel poem in which
every line is a lie – except one!

She tells the glass she has always been a
girl who wanted nothing more than the most
ordinary happiness …. soft, small, beautiful ….
and swears the garden in her palm is no lie,
that the light the little bell jar holds
is proof her whole life could weigh greater
than all the wreckage with its dull, dark allure,
that the ache behind her ribs is stronger than
the rose vines climbing toward the sun, that the
crouched, gray child in the mirror is the ugliest
story she has ever told. Her eyes know the truth.

NAR©2026
#W3

Nancy’s Notes: In a Golden Shovel poem, we borrow a line from an existing poem and use each word from that borrowed line (in order) as the final word of each line in our new poem. My borrowed line is from the poem “The Most Beautiful Lie” by Kevin Patrick II: “A most beautiful lie holds greater allure than the ugliest truth”. You may read the entire poem here.

This is “Little Lies” by Fleetwood Mac

W3 Prompt #219: Wea’ve Written Weekly

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