3.20

I told a friend about my poetry, last night. He didn't lean in and shiver, the way I do when I hear tinsel phrases drift ethereal through a roaring crowd. He didn't look away, either. He just listened, as I recited line after thudding line in increasing panic, praying for something to strike him. My memory failed in places and the drumbeat faded across the still waters of the Aegean, the oars of my intellect hanging, dripping. He always sat in silence for these. The clearer part of honor/is the organized defeat./You start the war in dignity;/you end it in retreat./But when you run away from me,/you've lost your only friend,/dear, for/when you pick a fight with me/it's your life that will end. He was unmoved. Perhaps I should have expected nothing less, because I wrote the lines for him.