Sleight of Autobiography

Stop teaching me not to cry.

I need to rinse away the decades

of trying to derail crash carts of 

personality by designing 

stratagems to keep things smooth, not worth 

the effort, the time, toward some outcome 

of negligible value. What if, what if, 

what if this or that eruption by whoever 

might erupt. The thing about personalities 

is that you need to stay far enough away

to still love them. My mentor's diagnosis 

of interpersonal spats was "They're just tired 

of each other." I laughed at that. 

Now at this moment in my tiny life 

history I find my loving foundation 

splintered. Just like that, irrevocably.

So I go on, in and out of my own way. 

My independent way. Failing to hide from

my own shadow. And I decide once 

and for all its faults, it's my shadow.