Find Your Matches

How they will scold you about the danger

Human connections are our primary concern, upon them we rely

For every aspect and ingredient of our flourishing: social, economic, cultural

Biological, if you are interested in ensuring that someone who vaguely resembles you

Will tearfully rehearse all of the trauma, real and imagined, that you rubbed their nose in

To some scandalized therapist who will repeat the most salacious details to a spouse over lunch

We need the other humans, and they need us, so do not burn your bridges

Utter, sanctimonious nonsense

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Be patient, be compassionate, be kind

Listen carefully and observe

Know that character is the sum of thought and word and deed

Betrayal is a martial art for some sentient selves

The knowing look, the raised eyebrow, the whisper in the shadows

All of these blades will be used to slice you into shame

When trust is trampled and faith is farcically falsified

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You will need courage

Not because you do not weigh all of the consequences

In the scales of your conscience and your desire

To smile contentedly more often in the future

In spite of the fear and the doubt and the anxious dreams

If a cruel word haunts you as you decide which slice will be toasted

If an odd look bubbles to the surface of your idle musing

If a rumor about you is passed on to you as amusing gossip

Complete with the signature of someone in whom you confided

Under the broken seal of perfect discretion and warm sympathy

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No one has a license to scamper giggling over the bridge of friendship

Collect some embarrassing photographs, a suspicious text and an open fly

Rush back to the mob purring with prurient curiosity

And throw all of your anguish into their bowls to be savored

Even the ones who raised you, or grew beside you in the exhausted soil

Can become haunters of your sunniest seconds who conspire

To distract you from your own parade with an ancient, indelible mistake

Even the ones who have seen you naked and been glad of it

To your joyful surprise

Will smear your portrait with their feces at a party

If the majority chuckles and gives them an encouraging pat

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Protean, perverse, paranoid and prone to produce paranoia

Primates have been refining our parlor tricks and social climbing strategies

For hundreds of thousands of years

The troop, the group, the hamlet, the village, the town, the city

All are intricate and vibrating webs woven of rumor and reputation

Islands joined by bridges, each to each

So many worry about how many links and likes enmesh them

With the shiniest islands with the loudest, longest parties

They will burn you to warm the hors d'oeuvres

Offer you a careful shave and slash you into silence

Your gasping mouth will make a fine foothold

As their craving climbs over you

This is how clever apes crucify each other

The spectacle is sensational

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If the bridge has been a means of plunder

If it has allowed the false and fiendish friend

To rob you of everything that kept you safe and warm

Ignite it with a graceful gesture

Watch the fingers of fire fold it into black origami

Smell the sinuous smoke soaring skyward

Detect in it the funeral incense of all your worries

Know that without this sketchy one to watch

Your eyes can read, and admire, and be dazzled

By the gorgeous museum of fond memories

The sparkling gifts of the future

The current froth and bubbling of fresh possibilities

Do not poison all of this with regret

You must have a way home and a way out

Everything else is superfluous luxury

If they do not make your survival more plausible

Let alone your fruitful, fascinating flourishing

Fire is all you ought to give them

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Let the moat of ash around your palace be a warning

Laugh as you grow lighter and stronger and more certain

Who and what you can do without, you should

Clean and uncluttered, let your little island

Lullaby you into sweet snoring

Love the genuine lovers

Trust the ones who trust you

Lift the ones who count your feathers with glee

As you become a soaring shadow against the sun

Let the rest burn