Flaw Salad

How will we be this time, my dear?

Will I celebrate you, and you’ll celebrate me? Will we delight in the curves and sweat and fingers between us? Will we lose our senses in a beautiful crescendo? Will we show each other kindness and tenderness, and exhaust ourselves with giving?

Will we reach for our daggers and carefully step aside? Will we cast suspicious leers as we choreograph our passing—you go that way, I’ll go here? Will we keep a safe distance and emerge unscathed?

Will we collide in an explosion? Will we grapple and attack? Will you pull me close with your left hand as you pummel with your right? Will I scratch and claw and scream my way free? Will we sit in our corners and nurse our wounds? Will we reach, dejected, for consolation? Will we slap each other away?

Or will it be this, one passing kindness in the afternoon? Will our exchange sit encased and perfect, a beacon of civility, a promise of what we could have been?

Two creatures of passion prepare to cross paths. And this one—this one is armed with love.