Your Truth, My Truth, and In Between

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Your truth comes across the television,
Polished, packaged, clean.
Mine comes from asking questions
About the things we’ve never seen.
Your truth wears an official seal,
Mine asks who placed it there.
Yours says, “Trust the institutions.”
Mine says, “Trust, but stay aware.”
Your truth quotes the headlines.
Mine reads beyond the page.
Yours calls questions dangerous.
Mine wonders who built the cage.
But neither truth becomes a fact
Because we shout it loud.
A million voices can be wrong
Even standing in a crowd.
Governments have hidden secrets.
People have spread lies.
Propaganda needs no uniform
To disguise itself before our eyes.
History is written by human hands,
And human hands can stain.
Facts can disappear beneath
Political convenience and gain.
But skepticism has dangers too,
For doubt can be deceived.
A lie opposing another lie
Should never be believed.
So your truth isn’t truth because
An official says it’s so.
And mine isn’t truth simply because
I question what they want me to know.
Somewhere beyond our politics,
Beyond the left and right,
Beyond the algorithms feeding us
The things that keep us in the fight,
There waits something stubborn,
Unafraid of being seen.
It doesn’t need our permission.
It doesn’t care what we believe.
Evidence leaves footprints.
Documents leave trails.
Promises meet consequences.
Eventually deception fails.
Ask who benefits from the story.
Ask who profits from the fear.
Ask what evidence supports it.
Ask what facts have disappeared.
Question presidents and preachers.
Question billionaires and kings.
Question journalists and strangers
Who claim to know all things.
Question me.
Question yourself.
Question what you’ve always known.
Because truth that fears examination
Was standing on weak stone.
There is your truth.
There is my truth.
There are stories in between.
And then there is the truth itself,
Untouched by red or blue,
Unafraid of investigation,
Unconcerned with me or you.
It existed before the headline.
It remains when speeches end.
It survives deleted records
And the narratives we defend.
Your truth may comfort you.
My truth may comfort me.
But truth was never meant for comfort.
Truth was meant to set us free.
~Anonymous