I approach friendships
With a two step process
I take two steps back
Every step forward.
I approach friendships
With caution in my voice
And hands and words and
mind. Caution is necessary.
I approach friendship with half truths.
I give less than half
of who I really am
I use it to gauge
Just how much of Me
a person is willing to take.
I approach friendships
with lies
Exactly the same way
I’m truthful
With passing strangers.
I tell my friends only
part of the story
Waiting for them
to piece back the pages
With tape and tweezers
And waiting for them
to throw out the bits
they don't like.
I approach friendship not unlike
The way I write
Skipping through the beginning
To the middle, editing
Altering myself,
not really lying
Just waiting for the end.
I guess I slotted myself
neatly, long ago,
Up up up on a High Shelf
Of "Things To Take in Small Doses"
And I stayed there.
With cough syrup and existentialism,
and a great deal of
my own special interests
Ones that I've labeled
with a big red
TOO MUCH sticker.
So now I approach friendships
like one would a wild animal
Cautious and
fearful of it running away.
I muddle facts about Me
and make them something
less than they are
Not greater or better
Not worse.
No grandeur or humility,
just half truths and quiet lies.
Less than the true sum of my parts.
I approach friendship
with the expectation to fail.
And maybe it's learned
Or maybe it's me
And maybe it’s sad
But at the very least,
I approach friendship.
And that's somewhere to start.
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