Embarrassment

It’s a wave, isn’t it? Not a particle. A fresh, cool wave, so why am I flushed and not washed? Why dirtier than before? 1. Etymology On the subject of our names. They’re so embracing, thinking they’re all us and swallowing themselves into our nausea. Yet we never quite die on the spot. We put off being what we’re called, we take the hint. Time is never wasted. It is always spent. 2. Teleology Sheer fabric trailing through 4 a.m. I thought it was opaque and earlier. 3. Mathematics I know you know I know. And the mirror multiplies inside. The world is no bigger, but next time do the math, because I wanted to know none of what I now know twice. 4. The Principle of the Borg Saying “There’s no one like me” accomplishes the exact opposite of what you mean. It is true only insofar as it is true for everyone equally. So it means you are not special in any way. Which should be enough for you. 5. Documentary This clothing, a maladaptive wrapping, cuts me up. I am a vignette, floated knowingly since I pulled myself through myself, like a unitard. Too many eyeholes have been cut and pieced together to make flesh less various with others. 6. Medicine The cure for embarrassment is substitution. Strap, don’t pluck. Baldness makes headlines. Use grass. Use less. Shorts under your skirt for recess. Redo the surfaces of your wrong turns to make taking them smoother in the future. 7. Cosmology Things are less embarrassing at the cellular level. Remember? We were a whole part of the universe before Mother busted the party. Before we were ourselves. Now, like dirty soap, we attract what we repel. 8. Apology Even the clumsiest fate is perfectly shaped, so the view took over looking but the sweetest thing I’ve ever known is obscene with a beautiful sugar rotted down to its truth. Loving you a serious accidental shame and day flatulates into night, trips and falls in front of millions into morning. In thrall to this pocus: the end of fear starts with such an annihilating blush, with such a stutter.