Communion Echoes

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COMMUNION ECHOES

I’ve worn red ties like tourniquets, cinched tight around doubt, telling myself the bleeding was patriotism. For forty years I shook hands in smoke-thick rooms, saluted flags stitched by lobbyists, and swallowed talking points like communion wafers—thin, tasteless, holy by repetition.

The slogans were lanterns, or so I thought. Now I see they were will-o’-the-wisps, leading me knee-deep into a swamp of half-truths and full wallets. I voted for fences and found cages. I cheered tax cuts and watched schools hollow out like termite-eaten pews.

“Bury me with the lies I told,” my father used to joke, but he meant it as gallows humor. I mean it as a confession. The party line frays in my hands like old rope. I’m tired of mistaking echoes for voices, tired of calling obedience “freedom.”

If I change now, they’ll call me a traitor. But I’m beginning to think loyalty to a lie is the deepest betrayal of all.

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Inspired by, and containing the line "Bury me with the lies I told," from “Bury Me,” by Alejandro Escovedo prompted by those political fibbers over at the DVerse Poets Pub.

©2026 Christopher Reilley 

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