Seven lines of sunshine, then two short lines that take it all back. Ella's "lie" is a poem about a day described as perfectly happy, and about the speaker's sudden refusal to keep up the story. Its central idea is that happiness can be performed, even to ourselves, and that the performance can be so thorough it gives itself away. We cannot tell what the speaker is hiding, because the poem never says. All we get is the cracking of the surface.
The title tells us the ending before we start, so we read the first stanza already suspicious, and the speaker's evidence starts to sound like a defence. Look at how the happiness is built: "i didn't try hard to be delight," "i did not fake it," "i ain't think about sad stuff." Three of the seven claims are negatives. The day is defined by what it lacked: effort, fakery, sadness. And "i did not fake it" is exactly what someone says when they are faking. The same goes for "sad stuff." To announce that you didn't think about it, you have to bring it into the room. The speaker keeps the sadness out by naming it.
The language is deliberately thin. "Pretty day," "good," "a lot," "stuff" are the vaguest words available. There is no weather, no place, no person, no sound, nothing a reader could picture. Judging by this absence, the day has no real content, and the speaker is working from a general idea of what a happy day should sound like. The only physical detail is the smile, and even that is guarded: "i smiled a lot. / i did not fake it." Odd phrasing adds to the effect. "To be delight" uses a noun where we expect "delighted" or "delightful," as if the speaker is reaching for a feeling she cannot quite fit around herself. "Every thing," split into two words, makes the goodness feel counted item by item rather than felt. And "ain't" in "i ain't think about sad stuff" gives the voice a casual, spoken ease, which fits the surface mood of someone saying everything is fine.
Formally, the poem is plain and quiet. There is no rhyme, and the lines are short, flat and evenly paced, each closed with a full stop. Nothing flows over a line break, so every line lands as a separate statement, like a witness reading out a list. That steadiness feels rehearsed. The lowercase "i" throughout makes the speaker look small on the page, and it suits the voice of a diary or a late-night message. Then comes the stanza break, the one real pause in the poem, and the rhythm shrinks: "but, no." has two beats, "i lied." has two more. The comma in "but, no." is a nice touch, because it reads as a small hesitation, a breath before the truth. "Yes, i was happy" sounds like an answer to a question we never hear, as if someone has asked how the day went and the speaker is still giving the expected reply. The title is in the present tense while the last line is in the past, which suggests the lying is both finished and ongoing.
The poem doesn't say which part was the lie. It could be the whole stanza, or only the last claim, "yes, i was happy." The smile may even have been real while the happiness was not. That openness is where the poem gets its force. Because Ella gives us no explanation, no event and no reason, we are left with the pattern itself: a person reciting cheerful details, then dropping the act. Many poems about sadness describe it directly. This one shows how hard it can be to say the word, and how much easier it is to list the evidence for being fine.
What makes "lie" worth reading is how much it does with so little. It has nine short lines and almost no decoration, and it still makes us doubt the speaker, then trust her at the moment she admits she can't be trusted. The last two lines are the only ones that need no defending, and the poem treats them as the first honest thing she has said.