Contemplating the Imperfections
Which I Find So Attractive About
You, Wondering Whether to
Take That Next Step
when someone says (it’s been me,
is it usually? yes, most often it’s me;
do i have the air of a perfectionist?
i can be one overbloated gloat after
another about being one, and in that
overachieving slacker way that makes it
more impossible to achieve than ever, so
this has rung most true until lately; not
that achieving such a pinnacle had ever
been anything but a fiction or a fraud) it’s
your imperfections i love the most about
you, well, they’re lying, just as i always did,
do, even though the truth of it as it is said
cannot be underestimated in the slightest,
at least in the grand scheme, that delicate
architecture of what keeps us attracted,
intrigued and therefore, together. my own
imperfections stare at me daily (truthfully
more so of late) like the quick-panged fear
of the onset of dementia, and are more un
comfortable than being in on the anti-joke
that goes at least two steps over the myst
erious semi-impermeable yet constantly and
sometimes wildly fluctuating line over which
a joke that extends a reach over such line has
on that rare occasion solved the avian-sphynx-
like riddle of how to get to the other side success
fully, but more often than not by reaching any dis
tance further than the snaking line was when the
bit was extended, so to speak, was offered, in that
bold or simply unintended and therefore ignorant
manner that put it past (whether just barely or
well overshot) that ever-slithering boundary. by
that very distance it has either failed in that career-
ending way that these things can. or else has mind-
bogglingly slapped upon our dear comedian a curious
respect- or friendship-solidifying upward trajectory.
how complete the eradication—how magnificent the
win—or how obliterating the explosion, how permanent
or short-lived the subsequent cancellation, so to speak—
can with no logic be known as quickly and hyperbolically
as the varied guesses of those present the instant the line
has been crossed. we may each act as both judge and
executioner, but none of us can ever really know the
good graces (are there significant social or financial
ramifications? will the mutation be negligible, in the
Darwinian sense, say? or will it become the stuff of
legend, a reputation not only maintaining but hence
forth expanding?) or the time-table of the possible prison-
sentence, or the duration the unruly quipster may inevitably
spend in exile and/or as pariah is the great unknown. time
holds the inevitable answers to these questions. nothing
or no one else do. but let me tell you now that i still and
forever shall love you, and never an ounce less. i am
at times fragile, it is true, but the harm that has been
done is in all senses meaningless, at least to me. that’s
just part of the journey, one small segment of the
long adventure of what you get with me when it
comes to such a complete and until death do us
part kind of bond, as we have, one into the other.
or what i’m really meaning here is that is the strength
and the durability of my grip into you. it is exactly that
inexplicable commitment which i ask you now to explain
to me as it relates but from your perspective. oh, but
there is no need. i shall not doubt, even if is this con
fidence that is my downfall. or, more at honesty, always
more at that, i’ll just go about my doubt privately. and
what a coup if it turns out that i’ve been right all along,
wouldn’t you say? but just to be clear, it’s not the
imperfections i love so much as the comfort i feel
in glorying in them, not being bound by them,
and in the life-long journey of piecing together
to me as it relates but from your perspective. oh, but
there is no need. i shall not doubt, even if is this con
fidence that is my downfall. or, more at honesty, always
more at that, i’ll just go about my doubt privately. and
what a coup if it turns out that i’ve been right all along,
wouldn’t you say? but just to be clear, it’s not the
imperfections i love so much as the comfort i feel
in glorying in them, not being bound by them,
and in the life-long journey of piecing together
who you are, in the never ceasing attempt to
piece together the puzzle of you and of us,
to in some way know as one will of course
know nirvana, a knowledge that will remain
at best unattainable, and at worst, a figment
of my imagination until the moment
i see right through it and into you.
