The First Reflection

First off, I must confess to a terrible sin.

I am the definition of a coward. I know what the right thing to do is, or at least what I should do, and fail to do so out of fear of the consequences. Does the linchpin of a grenade ever imagine itself trapped? Proud one moment they’re holding their post and keeping things from becoming explosive, stressed the next that their role is precisely to stay in place and nothing else?

What consequences lay before me that are so terrible? To list them is to acknowledge I believe myself so irreplaceable and that my small world would shatter to pieces in my absence. I think I’ve begun to believe this because I have been told this so many times. So, I stay in place, my presence continuing to protect the world one bated breath at a time.

I watched a man get so angry and not know what to do with his fury he punched the dashboard of his car. He punched it four times before I walked away. I thought I was brave coming back to tell him words the shape of my heart. I thought I was being fair, each of us acquiescing one another’s ultimatums. I said I would walk home to clear the image out of my mind. I didn’t. Now the thought lingers, a box of grenades jarred in a car crash. I did my job too well.

My next post will be the first installment of an essay I have long gone back and forth working on. Here, it might well encourage me to finish the damn thing.