I. The Split Room
There is a room behind the ribs
with two doors and one name.
On one door: “I am good.”
On the other: “I did what I swore I never would.”
Both doors swing open at once,
and the air between them screams.
The mind rushes in with paint and excuses,
coloring over cracks it refuses to read.
“I had no choice.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“Everyone does it.”
Each phrase a thin coat on a wall that still buckles.
The heart knows the math does not add up.
Belief on one side, behavior on the other,
a broken equation that keeps solving itself
by erasing the parts that hurt too much to keep.
So values are trimmed to fit actions,
like a map cut down to match a shrinking world.
Conscience is rebranded as overreaction,
regret renamed “weakness” and locked outside.
But the body remembers what the tongue denies:
tight shoulders, shallow sleep, the sudden flare of anger
when someone else mirrors the thing
we cannot bear to see in our own reflection.
Soon, the story of “who I am”
leans harder on denial than on truth.
Relationships bend under invisible weight,
trust thinning where explanations grow thick.
This is how a soul goes lopsided—
not in one grand betrayal,
but in a thousand quiet edits
to keep the mirror from shouting.
And still, a softer path waits at the edge:
to stand in the split room, unarmed,
letting both doors stay open long enough
to say, “Yes, I did this—and I still choose to change.”
It is a painful kind of mercy,
to let inner worlds realign without alibis.
Yet without that raw recalibration,
the cost of the split is paid in fragments of a life
that never quite feels whole enough to live in.
II. The Splinter in the Mind
There is a place inside us
where two truths collide—
not with the thunder of storms,
but with the quiet violence
of a hairline fracture in glass.
Cognitive dissonance begins small,
a splinter of contradiction
lodging itself beneath the skin of belief.
We tell ourselves it is nothing—
just a discomfort,
a passing sting—
but it grows nerve endings of its own.
The mind hates division.
It wants to be whole,
even if it must lie to itself
to feel unbroken.
So it builds stories,
rearranges memories like mismatched furniture,
paints over the cracks
with whatever color pride prefers that day.
It convinces the heart
that discomfort is evidence of attack,
not of truth
trying to get in.
We cling tighter to the wrong idea
than we ever did to the right one.
Because to release it
would mean admitting
that we’ve been carrying a false weight—
and the ego fears the sound
of anything dropping.
But denial has a price.
Soon the fracture spreads,
fanning through the psyche like frost
etching its cold geometry on glass.
We defend our first mistakes
as though they were sacred,
push away the hands
that try to show us the mirror,
call their reflection an assault
rather than an offering.
Reason becomes a foreign language,
spoken softly,
unheard over the pounding need
to remain righteous.
And from this widening rift
flow the predictable consequences:
relationships strained
under the tension of what we refuse to see;
anger sharpened
by the fear of being wrong;
isolation thickening
around the fortress of our certainty.
For the mind in dissonance
cannot tell friend from foe—
only challenger from threat.
But there is another path,
quiet and difficult,
lit by the willingness
to let the truth sting
but save the limb.
It begins with the smallest admission:
I may not be right.
A whisper of humility,
a loosening of the grip
on the fragile version of ourselves
that we’ve mistaken for our whole being.
When we let that splinter surface,
when we let it be removed,
the mind sighs
into its natural unity.
And the world becomes clearer,
less distorted by the trembling lens
of defended illusions.
Cognitive dissonance
is not a villain—
only a reminder
of how fiercely we protect
the fragile story called “me.”
And how much freedom waits
on the other side
of letting that story change.
III. The House With Two Suns
I once lived in a house
with two suns.
One rose in the east,
warm and gentle,
whispering truths in colors
only dawn can explain.
The other climbed from the west,
fiery and insistent,
declaring itself the rightful ruler
of the sky.
Both claimed the day.
Both flooded the world with light.
Neither would yield.
And so my shadow split in two,
pulling at my feet
like wolves with opposite hungers.
At first, I pretended
the sky was normal—
that no one else noticed
the strange geometry of light,
that the walls didn’t groan
under the strain
of being pulled
between two different mornings.
I rearranged the furniture
to hide the cracks,
spoke loudly enough
to drown out the trembling,
and carried on
as though the horizon
still made sense.
But the house knew.
Wood has a memory for pressure.
Stone remembers every argument
the foundation has ever endured.
Rooms built for one truth
cannot hold two for long.
Some days,
the eastern sun warmed my skin
with its gentle sincerity,
and I believed it.
Other days,
the western sun burned so fiercely
I bowed instinctively,
as though devotion
were the same as clarity.
When both suns reached
their highest thrones,
their lights collided—
a blinding storm
of incompatible brilliance—
and the house shuddered
as though the rafters
held their breath.
Walls strained.
Windows warped.
The roof trembled
under the weight
of two contradicting heavens.
And I,
caught between rival kings,
felt myself thinning,
splitting,
becoming a question
with no single answer.
The inevitable came quietly—
not as ruin,
but as revelation.
I stepped outside.
I let the house collapse
behind me,
not in violence,
but in surrender—
a tired structure relieved
to stop pretending
it was strong enough
to hold two realities.
And when I looked to the sky,
I saw there had always been
just one sun.
The other was a reflection
in a distant mirror,
a bright lie
cast upon the clouds
by my own refusal
to let one truth go.
The world didn’t change.
Only my willingness
to see it.
And with that single sun
warming my face,
I understood:
No house can stand
on divided light.
No soul can thrive
in the gravity
of two opposing dawns.
And freedom comes
the moment we stop
building homes
for illusions.
IV. The Knight's Tale
In realms of mind, where thoughts as titans clash,
A silent war, a sudden, jarring crash.
Sir Veritas, a knight of noble quest,
With shield of facts and truth upon his crest,
Did hold a view, a world both clear and bright,
Where all he knew was just and good and right.
He loved the crown, the king of golden hair,
Whose every word was righteous and was fair.
He’d fought the wars, and bled for kingly pride,
With loyalty a fortress deep inside.
This fealty, a mountain, strong and vast,
A shadow that his very being cast.
But whispers came, on winds of doubt and fear,
Of deeds most foul, for only he to hear.
A stolen scroll, a merchant's tearful plea,
Revealed a truth he wished he could not see.
The king, so lauded, virtuous, and grand,
Had plundered wealth and starved the fertile land.
Now in his soul, two warring standards rise,
The loyal knight, and he who can’t trust lies.
The first proclaims, "The king is just and true!"
The other screams, "But see what he can do!"
A chasm yawns, a deep and psychic rift,
A dissonance, a poisoned, bitter gift.
His sleep is gone, his meals have lost their taste,
His world of black and white has been effaced.
To hold the truth of what the king has done,
Would mean the battles that he fought and won,
The scars he bore, the oaths that he had sworn,
Were all for naught, a thing of shame and scorn.
And so his mind, to quell the raging storm,
Begins to weave a tapestry of form.
"The scroll was forged, the merchant surely lied,
A plot," he thinks, "to turn the loyal tide."
Or maybe, "Yes, the king did take the gold,
But for a cause, a story yet untold."
"A greater good, a necessary price,
To save the realm from some unseen device."
He twists the facts, he bends them to his will,
To make his warring thoughts be calm and still.
He seeks out friends who praise the king's decree,
And shuns the ones who whisper, "Can't you see?"
He polishes his armor, dull with dread,
And focuses on what the king once said.
He doubles down, his loyalty now fierce,
A desperate cry to make the doubts disperse.
The comfort of his old belief, so sweet,
Is worth the price of this self-spun deceit.
So stands the knight, upon that fractured ground,
Where two beliefs can never both be sound.
He chose the one that caused the lesser pain,
And chained his mind, to serve the king again.
But in the quiet, when the world is dim,
The echo of the truth still calls to him.
V. The Architecture of the Self
The architecture of the self is built on bone-white truths,
Or so I thought. Each one a pillar, straight and absolute,
Supporting floors where I could walk and know the room,
The view from every window, the scent of every bloom.
I was the architect, the mason, and the king
Of this internal country, of every thought I’d sing.
My first truth was a cornerstone: I am a gentle soul.
I feed the stray, I mend the wing, I strive to make things whole.
My hands are for the lifting up, my voice is for the calm.
I walk a path of empathy, and mean to do no harm.
This pillar gleamed, a polished thing, a comfort and a guide,
The man I was, or so I swore, to everyone outside.
My second was a girder, forged in fires of the will:
The world responds to what is right, if one is patient still.
That justice is a current, though it may run deep and slow,
And what you give is what you get, from seeds of what you sow.
I built my life upon this law, this elegant equation,
A universe of moral cause, a balanced, fair creation.
Then you arrived. Not as a storm, but as a quiet hum,
A dissonance in harmony, a future yet to come.
And in the closeness of our days, a crack began to show,
Not in the world, but in the man I thought I’d come to know.
A word said sharp, a door held shut, a turning of the head,
A flash of anger, cold and quick, that left a feeling dead.
It was a trifle, nothing more. A moment’s slight, you see.
But it did not belong to him, the gentle soul of me.
And so the mind, that frantic scribe, began its subtle lie:
“The day was long, the stress was great, it’s right to be awry.”
The pillar of my gentleness was patched with hasty thread,
Excuses whispered in the dark, to put the doubt to bed.
But then the crack appeared again, a fissure, thin and grey.
I saw a choice, a chance to help, and chose to walk away.
And the equation of the world, my girder, groaned with strain.
My universe of moral cause was filled with sudden rain.
The world is not the problem here, a voice began to cry,
The variable that does not fit, the constant that is ‘I’.
To hold two thoughts in one small skull is torture of the soul:
I am a good and gentle man.
I acted with control, and chose the path of selfishness, and watched another fall.
The space between them is a void, a terror, and a wall.
To save the pillar, I must break the mirror of the deed,
To say it wasn’t what it was, to plant a different seed.
“It wasn’t selfishness,” I plead, to the jury in my head.
“It was survival, self-regard, a necessary dread.”
“He would have been fine anyway. My help was not required.”
The architecture of the self is re-wired, re-inspired.
I change the memory, shift the light, I edit and redact,
Until the man I want to be is once again intact.
But the foundation is disturbed. The floors are slightly sloped.
A draft comes through a hidden crack with which I haven’t coped.
I live inside this house I’ve saved, this patched and fragile place,
And tell myself it’s strong and true, and written on my face.
But late at night, the building groans, a deep and mournful sound,
The ghost of a discarded truth, still buried in the ground.
Dec 1, 2025
Dec 1, 2025 at 2:37 PM UTC
I. The Split Room
There is a room behind the ribs
with two doors and one name.
On one door: “I am good.”
On the other: “I did what I swore I never would.”
Both doors swing open at once,
and the air between them screams.
The mind rushes in with paint and excuses,
coloring over cracks it refuses to read.
“I had no choice.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“Everyone does it.”
Each phrase a thin coat on a wall that still buckles.
The heart knows the math does not add up.
Belief on one side, behavior on the other,
a broken equation that keeps solving itself
by erasing the parts that hurt too much to keep.
So values are trimmed to fit actions,
like a map cut down to match a shrinking world.
Conscience is rebranded as overreaction,
regret renamed “weakness” and locked outside.
But the body remembers what the tongue denies:
tight shoulders, shallow sleep, the sudden flare of anger
when someone else mirrors the thing
we cannot bear to see in our own reflection.
Soon, the story of “who I am”
leans harder on denial than on truth.
Relationships bend under invisible weight,
trust thinning where explanations grow thick.
This is how a soul goes lopsided—
not in one grand betrayal,
but in a thousand quiet edits
to keep the mirror from shouting.
And still, a softer path waits at the edge:
to stand in the split room, unarmed,
letting both doors stay open long enough
to say, “Yes, I did this—and I still choose to change.”
It is a painful kind of mercy,
to let inner worlds realign without alibis.
Yet without that raw recalibration,
the cost of the split is paid in fragments of a life
that never quite feels whole enough to live in.
II. The Splinter in the Mind
There is a place inside us
where two truths collide—
not with the thunder of storms,
but with the quiet violence
of a hairline fracture in glass.
Cognitive dissonance begins small,
a splinter of contradiction
lodging itself beneath the skin of belief.
We tell ourselves it is nothing—
just a discomfort,
a passing sting—
but it grows nerve endings of its own.
The mind hates division.
It wants to be whole,
even if it must lie to itself
to feel unbroken.
So it builds stories,
rearranges memories like mismatched furniture,
paints over the cracks
with whatever color pride prefers that day.
It convinces the heart
that discomfort is evidence of attack,
not of truth
trying to get in.
We cling tighter to the wrong idea
than we ever did to the right one.
Because to release it
would mean admitting
that we’ve been carrying a false weight—
and the ego fears the sound
of anything dropping.
But denial has a price.
Soon the fracture spreads,
fanning through the psyche like frost
etching its cold geometry on glass.
We defend our first mistakes
as though they were sacred,
push away the hands
that try to show us the mirror,
call their reflection an assault
rather than an offering.
Reason becomes a foreign language,
spoken softly,
unheard over the pounding need
to remain righteous.
And from this widening rift
flow the predictable consequences:
relationships strained
under the tension of what we refuse to see;
anger sharpened
by the fear of being wrong;
isolation thickening
around the fortress of our certainty.
For the mind in dissonance
cannot tell friend from foe—
only challenger from threat.
But there is another path,
quiet and difficult,
lit by the willingness
to let the truth sting
but save the limb.
It begins with the smallest admission:
I may not be right.
A whisper of humility,
a loosening of the grip
on the fragile version of ourselves
that we’ve mistaken for our whole being.
When we let that splinter surface,
when we let it be removed,
the mind sighs
into its natural unity.
And the world becomes clearer,
less distorted by the trembling lens
of defended illusions.
Cognitive dissonance
is not a villain—
only a reminder
of how fiercely we protect
the fragile story called “me.”
And how much freedom waits
on the other side
of letting that story change.
III. The House With Two Suns
I once lived in a house
with two suns.
One rose in the east,
warm and gentle,
whispering truths in colors
only dawn can explain.
The other climbed from the west,
fiery and insistent,
declaring itself the rightful ruler
of the sky.
Both claimed the day.
Both flooded the world with light.
Neither would yield.
And so my shadow split in two,
pulling at my feet
like wolves with opposite hungers.
At first, I pretended
the sky was normal—
that no one else noticed
the strange geometry of light,
that the walls didn’t groan
under the strain
of being pulled
between two different mornings.
I rearranged the furniture
to hide the cracks,
spoke loudly enough
to drown out the trembling,
and carried on
as though the horizon
still made sense.
But the house knew.
Wood has a memory for pressure.
Stone remembers every argument
the foundation has ever endured.
Rooms built for one truth
cannot hold two for long.
Some days,
the eastern sun warmed my skin
with its gentle sincerity,
and I believed it.
Other days,
the western sun burned so fiercely
I bowed instinctively,
as though devotion
were the same as clarity.
When both suns reached
their highest thrones,
their lights collided—
a blinding storm
of incompatible brilliance—
and the house shuddered
as though the rafters
held their breath.
Walls strained.
Windows warped.
The roof trembled
under the weight
of two contradicting heavens.
And I,
caught between rival kings,
felt myself thinning,
splitting,
becoming a question
with no single answer.
The inevitable came quietly—
not as ruin,
but as revelation.
I stepped outside.
I let the house collapse
behind me,
not in violence,
but in surrender—
a tired structure relieved
to stop pretending
it was strong enough
to hold two realities.
And when I looked to the sky,
I saw there had always been
just one sun.
The other was a reflection
in a distant mirror,
a bright lie
cast upon the clouds
by my own refusal
to let one truth go.
The world didn’t change.
Only my willingness
to see it.
And with that single sun
warming my face,
I understood:
No house can stand
on divided light.
No soul can thrive
in the gravity
of two opposing dawns.
And freedom comes
the moment we stop
building homes
for illusions.
IV. The Knight's Tale
In realms of mind, where thoughts as titans clash,
A silent war, a sudden, jarring crash.
Sir Veritas, a knight of noble quest,
With shield of facts and truth upon his crest,
Did hold a view, a world both clear and bright,
Where all he knew was just and good and right.
He loved the crown, the king of golden hair,
Whose every word was righteous and was fair.
He’d fought the wars, and bled for kingly pride,
With loyalty a fortress deep inside.
This fealty, a mountain, strong and vast,
A shadow that his very being cast.
But whispers came, on winds of doubt and fear,
Of deeds most foul, for only he to hear.
A stolen scroll, a merchant's tearful plea,
Revealed a truth he wished he could not see.
The king, so lauded, virtuous, and grand,
Had plundered wealth and starved the fertile land.
Now in his soul, two warring standards rise,
The loyal knight, and he who can’t trust lies.
The first proclaims, "The king is just and true!"
The other screams, "But see what he can do!"
A chasm yawns, a deep and psychic rift,
A dissonance, a poisoned, bitter gift.
His sleep is gone, his meals have lost their taste,
His world of black and white has been effaced.
To hold the truth of what the king has done,
Would mean the battles that he fought and won,
The scars he bore, the oaths that he had sworn,
Were all for naught, a thing of shame and scorn.
And so his mind, to quell the raging storm,
Begins to weave a tapestry of form.
"The scroll was forged, the merchant surely lied,
A plot," he thinks, "to turn the loyal tide."
Or maybe, "Yes, the king did take the gold,
But for a cause, a story yet untold."
"A greater good, a necessary price,
To save the realm from some unseen device."
He twists the facts, he bends them to his will,
To make his warring thoughts be calm and still.
He seeks out friends who praise the king's decree,
And shuns the ones who whisper, "Can't you see?"
He polishes his armor, dull with dread,
And focuses on what the king once said.
He doubles down, his loyalty now fierce,
A desperate cry to make the doubts disperse.
The comfort of his old belief, so sweet,
Is worth the price of this self-spun deceit.
So stands the knight, upon that fractured ground,
Where two beliefs can never both be sound.
He chose the one that caused the lesser pain,
And chained his mind, to serve the king again.
But in the quiet, when the world is dim,
The echo of the truth still calls to him.
V. The Architecture of the Self
The architecture of the self is built on bone-white truths,
Or so I thought. Each one a pillar, straight and absolute,
Supporting floors where I could walk and know the room,
The view from every window, the scent of every bloom.
I was the architect, the mason, and the king
Of this internal country, of every thought I’d sing.
My first truth was a cornerstone: I am a gentle soul.
I feed the stray, I mend the wing, I strive to make things whole.
My hands are for the lifting up, my voice is for the calm.
I walk a path of empathy, and mean to do no harm.
This pillar gleamed, a polished thing, a comfort and a guide,
The man I was, or so I swore, to everyone outside.
My second was a girder, forged in fires of the will:
The world responds to what is right, if one is patient still.
That justice is a current, though it may run deep and slow,
And what you give is what you get, from seeds of what you sow.
I built my life upon this law, this elegant equation,
A universe of moral cause, a balanced, fair creation.
Then you arrived. Not as a storm, but as a quiet hum,
A dissonance in harmony, a future yet to come.
And in the closeness of our days, a crack began to show,
Not in the world, but in the man I thought I’d come to know.
A word said sharp, a door held shut, a turning of the head,
A flash of anger, cold and quick, that left a feeling dead.
It was a trifle, nothing more. A moment’s slight, you see.
But it did not belong to him, the gentle soul of me.
And so the mind, that frantic scribe, began its subtle lie:
“The day was long, the stress was great, it’s right to be awry.”
The pillar of my gentleness was patched with hasty thread,
Excuses whispered in the dark, to put the doubt to bed.
But then the crack appeared again, a fissure, thin and grey.
I saw a choice, a chance to help, and chose to walk away.
And the equation of the world, my girder, groaned with strain.
My universe of moral cause was filled with sudden rain.
The world is not the problem here, a voice began to cry,
The variable that does not fit, the constant that is ‘I’.
To hold two thoughts in one small skull is torture of the soul:
I am a good and gentle man.
I acted with control, and chose the path of selfishness, and watched another fall.
The space between them is a void, a terror, and a wall.
To save the pillar, I must break the mirror of the deed,
To say it wasn’t what it was, to plant a different seed.
“It wasn’t selfishness,” I plead, to the jury in my head.
“It was survival, self-regard, a necessary dread.”
“He would have been fine anyway. My help was not required.”
The architecture of the self is re-wired, re-inspired.
I change the memory, shift the light, I edit and redact,
Until the man I want to be is once again intact.
But the foundation is disturbed. The floors are slightly sloped.
A draft comes through a hidden crack with which I haven’t coped.
I live inside this house I’ve saved, this patched and fragile place,
And tell myself it’s strong and true, and written on my face.
But late at night, the building groans, a deep and mournful sound,
The ghost of a discarded truth, still buried in the ground.
I have been studying cognitive dissonance for some time. What feels like most of My life. The acknowledgement of, the reasoning behind it, and how to maneuver around it. I do hope this may help anyone that may feel this way.
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