The Wrong Guy

When you’re with people,
it’s a tossup whether to be
fully revealed.
First impulse is always
to clutch yourself to yourself
like you’re your own baby.
But when you start concealing,
you run the risk of concealing everything,
until there’s no one left
to receive advice,
to ignore it as best you can.
So, realizing
that one shame shouldn’t
bury another,
and a blush is just
the blood flow of a smile,
you said, “Yes, I’m going out with him.”
Then for the longest time,
you could feel their eyes
burning bible passages on your chest
while their tongues hurried back into cold storage.
Finally, one of them blurted out,
“Well he is a good looking young man.”
You slipped those words on your head like a tiara.
It shone so bright
that, for a moment,
no one could read
the stifling regulations of this world.

~~ John Grey