4/30: Pinnochio Growed Up

So it's the 30/30 challenge - April is National Poetry Month, so write a poem a day for 30 days... NaPoWriMo gives you 30 rough drafts. Today is extra rough, still just an idea in my head. Check back from time to time if you're so inclined to see how the poems of the past days have changed, reshaped, words exchanged, ideas rearranged... as in, today I'm not proud of but it might be better in a few days...

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He told the lie quite by accident,
the first in twenty-some years.
It was simple, and painless, the waitress asked
if he wanted cream with his coffee,
and his hasty reply was:
"No. I mean... yes."
And there it was, just like that. And because
he was a real boy now, he found, his nose
didn't budge an inch. He tried it again
later, on the subway. Leaned over
to a complete stranger and said,
"I *love* that tie." Just to get
the feel of the lie in his mouth,
oil-slick and metallic tasting. Over the next
five years, he married for money, took a mistress,
made her his second wife, took a third, traded stocks
with insider info, told his children he loved them
even on the days when he didn't. When he realized
he could no longer understand the crickets' song,
the weight of it all became too much to bear.
He went to the old home where his father still lived,
still carved, still sang in the mornings and told him
everything. Something changed in Gepetto's eyes.
He sat down his knife and after a six-foot silence sighed:
"I never should have wished you
down off those strings."