Inconvenient Conscience

Inconvenient Conscience of a Saleswoman


Sell the idea

and sell it fast

Gloss over the facts

Don’t breathe

Just shine


Same drill

different day

New prey

Old story

Money, money


she freezes

Autopilot switches off

Alternative facts become hard to weave

The problem, her biggest one ever, she thinks

follows her through the day

New faces to impress

but the clever spin

the loophole roller coaster

has shut down in her head

The spotlight is smoking

hot and unrelenting

She sweats

turning her head from the glare

buying time to search

for the slanted sparkle of the dream

she’s supposed to be selling

People stare

She struggles for the words

her conscience had thrown

in a box

Sloppy Scrabble pieces

that won’t arrange themselves

until she agrees

not to change the meaning

by Christina Lynn Lambert


To borrow a phrase from one of my favorite TV shows, “the truth is out there”, but sometimes striking a match in the dark shows more than I could have imagined. Some truths are inconvenient, some are denied so harshly the candle is blown out and the door slammed shut. Some truths lead to missing pieces, chunks of our souls, answers that fill in the blanks.

No search is complete without a few risks during the journey. I try to remember that no truth is absolute but also that no answer, no light is possible without sacrifice. No worthy answer comes without the price of losing part of the self that hung on to the darkness and the truths we thought we understood.