June 30, 2020

confession

Sometimes, in the middle of the day, I watch an episode of a television show about singles
in which 12 contestants couple and uncouple until two winners emerge with a cash prize.
It is a vacuous exercise, bereft of merit save copious views of nimble, bronzed bodies 
that rotate, like chatty frankfurters, on the chaise longues of a Spanish villa. But between 
cocktails and gossip and antics on the flamingo floaties in the villa’s lissome pool,
I find myself grateful, and increasingly so, that my early 20s passed without such splash.
As I watch, I find I am passing my hands over a scar, through my unkempt hair, 
along the ankle I once twisted that never quite resumed its flexion. I am remembering, 
in the grimace of pleasure, the fumblings of early lust, error upon error upon error, 
all of it tilting toward yearning, toward beauty, toward love.