the better part of valor

I should have known better because I did. Long before I met you, I said to myself: Indiscreet use of charm is a dangerous thing. 

I think about how careless you are with yours, to leave it lying around like so many suddenly unnecessary and summarily discarded sweaters. And when we, happy for an excuse, called you to return them, with hope in our throats you said oh, don’t bother, I’ve got another one. And even your rejection was charming, your ways charm us still, but we are crushed like so much ice, like a small and poorly planned uprising, like crocuses in a late snow.

We try to find out whether we can breathe underwater and look! We can. It is difficult, very difficult, and if you asked us we’d probably admit that we don’t actually like it, and yet we don’t admit it, we don’t think about that, we are instead proud of our ability, we are practically crowing, we are sure now that we can follow you to the bottom of the sea and we try to, we follow you down to where it’s very dark and we try to see but we can’t. By now we are very strong swimmers so we say, just wait a second, please, and we swim back up to the surface, strap flashlights to our heads, and plunge back into the darkness again, breathing as always with extreme difficulty. But it is dark, and you did not wait, and you are gone, and even though we look for a long time, we cannot find you.

Oh, I would reach for the moon and drown in a pool, I know. That’s the only way I’ve ever known how to be.